Break of Dawn
by muggleborn.dragon.ryder
Summary: Sixteen years is a long time to live in darkness. AU. Rated T for some heavy stuff in later chapters.
1. Chapter 1

_**Break of Dawn**_

**A/N: Why am I starting all these new stories? DX Welll in my defense, this one has been on my mind for a LONG while and I was playing RotG in the background trying to get crap done...this was born. Although it did occur me at what felt like the break of dawn one morning, hence the title. I don't really know what time it was. **

* * *

It was Aster's favorite kind of day.

Nearly spring, a touch of summer in the air, a kiss of winter lingering with every cool breeze. The wind ruffled the pages of his paperback novel, and the young man stretched a bit, smiling as he read the words he had already read one time too many. Everyone had a favorite book, and this one was Aster's.

His afternoon would have continued in this relaxed fashion if not for Ms. Bennett.

The quiet, single mother across the street had once been almost like the parent that the orphaned boy had never had. Sympathy for many ran thick in her veins, and Aster remembered now why her visits were more often brought over to his house. He cut his gaze to the house across the street, inwardly seething upon seeing that boy, her adoptive child.

And the question that remained in his mind was why? Why would anybody choose to adopt somebody as irksome as Jack Frost, somebody as immature, somebody as irresponsible? When Aster was that kid's age, he wouldn't have gotten away with half the stuff that Jack had gotten away with in the orphanage. The boy was leaning against the porch railing, a faraway look in his eyes as he stared out at the neighborhood, but Aster knew that there was no way that boy's thoughts ran any deeper than the puddles of rainwater on the ground.

He heard Ms. Bennett clear her throat, and he turned his attention to the beautiful woman. She was playing with her hands, smoothing out a wrinkle in her purple shirt, looking uncertain as to whether or not she ought to even say anything. "Aster…I need to ask you a favor."

Aster raised an eyebrow, tearing his gaze away from Jack. "A favor, huh?" He forced a smile for her. Although he didn't understand exactly why she'd chosen to adopt somebody like Jack, she was still close to him. "Sure, I'll do you a favor." The twenty-year-old ran a hand through his ashy blonde hair, tilting his head questioningly at her.

"Well…you know about my business trip in a few days up to Chicago?"

Aster nodded, his hand freezing where it was within his blonde strands. Of course he knew about the business trip.

"Well, the problem is…Jack will be here alone for three weeks." Ms. Bennett explained carefully, her hand sliding down to her skirt, smoothing it out nervously. "And I really have no doubt that he can take care of himself, but…if you wouldn't mind…"

"You want me to babysit the kid?" Aster asked flatly, all trace of a smile gone.

"If you wouldn't mind looking after him for a little while we're gone, that would be great."

Aster ran a hand over his face and sighed softly.

"I mean, he's used to being alone." Ms. Bennett added softly, her eyes turning a bit darker and softer as her gaze traveled over to her adoptive child. "And he can certainly take care of himself, I know that, but…I only adopted him last month. I don't want…I don't want anything bad to happen. He doesn't care about being alone, but it's the little things." she sighed and closed her eyes, and for a second Aster could see every tired line on her face and he suddenly understood how hard things had been for her in the past year. He could still see little Jamie and Sophie in his mind's eye. He still remembered the nights that the candles had burned in the windows of the house across the street all night long, for days on end. Aster had thought his own pain for the two would never cease either.

Aster ran his hand through his hair again, his signature gesture whenever he was distressed or frustrated. "Alright."

Ms. Bennett opened her eyes. Despite how much she sometimes felt like she could count on Aster, there were other times when it felt like everything was falling through. "Alright?"

"I'll look after the kid." Aster conceded quietly. "I'll make sure he's, you know. Alright. I'll make sure he's doing okay. I'll make sure he's not alone."

"Thank you, Aster." Ms. Bennett smiled, enveloping him in a warm embrace.

As usual whenever somebody hugged him, Aster hesitated for a split second before hugging them back. He couldn't remember the last time a person besides Ms. Bennett – or even Ms. Bennett – had hugged him. He didn't receive physical affection very often, especially when you considered that he lived alone. He put his arms slowly around the woman, patting her soothingly on the back. "No need to thank me, Sheila. After all you've done for me, it's something I owe to you."

She pulled away and smiled at him, her hair tangling in her long brown curls. "It's only for three weeks."

"I know."

"I'm only making sure you know."

"You mentioned it three times in that sentence."

"Have I?"

"Yes."

"Sorry."

"It's alright."

* * *

Aster was technically awake. It was just that he was dozing a bit over his morning coffee when the doorbell rang and it startled him so much that he was instantly startled awake again. Letting out a string of profanities and jumping up from the table, he raced for the door, latched onto the knob and yanked. There was no worse way to start his morning, he decided, than to open up the door and find Jack Frost staring at him, one hand clutching his backpack. The fingers on the other hand were nervously drumming on the doorframe and he was staring around at the house with an open, bright curiosity. The sparkle in his bright blue eyes made him look both younger and, at the same time, older than he really was.

"Ms. Bennett told me to come here after school instead of to our house." he explained, brushing the hair out of his eyes. It was so bright it was almost white, Aster noted. And somehow this made the teenager seem even more annoying. "I'm hoping I'm welcome." the boy added, with a shadow of a smirk beginning to cross his face.

"Come in." Aster's tone could easily have been used for the sentence, 'go eat nails'. He tried to sound more hospitable. Clearing his throat, he repeated, "Come in. It's…uh…it's just for three weeks, right?"

"Yep." Jack nodded slowly, stepping in the door as Aster edged out of the way.

The twenty-year-old reached over and closed the door behind the boy, who was now looking around at the inside with that same curiosity that made him seem almost tolerable. "This is a nice place." Jack told him, but he was clutching his backpack like he expected the shadows to jump out at him and grab him.

"Thank you." Aster found it slightly easier than he expected to carry on a conversation with the boy. "I've got several rooms upstairs that I don't use, so…whichever one you like, you can pick that one." Had he ever spoken to the boy before? he wondered to himself, but quickly shook off the question.

"Um…" Jack hesitated, looking awkwardly about himself at the living room. "Thank you…?" The question mark at the end of his words was both amusing and a bit unsettling. Aster had half-expected the teenager to stroll in here and make himself at home, but the white-haired boy seemed so awkward and out-of-place that he felt a sudden urge to make him feel welcome. The problem was, Aster had no idea how to do that. He had never had to deal with children, even teenagers, before. Not when he was older than them, or had to look after them anyway. "You're welcome," he said gruffly. "Why don't you go ahead and pick one out?"

"Oh! Alright." Jack seemed glad of an excuse to get away, because he walked up the stairs fairly quickly, but his eyes were still wide. He was still taking it all in. Aster watched the white-haired boy walk slowly up the staircase, out of sight, onto the landing.

When Jack arrived at the top of the stairs and peeked into the first room, what he saw took his breath away. Even though he had lived in this neighborhood for a month, he still wasn't used to nice houses with two stories and caring people. But it wasn't that that caused him to stop. It was the mural painted on the wall, the beautiful spring day, with the grass shining from early morning dew, the sky a brilliant cerulean color.

"Aster!" he dashed back out to landing, feeling a wide grin breaking out over his face. "Aster, come here!"

And this sent the twenty-year-old into something of a fright. For God's sake, the kid had only been in his house for two minutes and he'd gotten hurt? He knew he shouldn't have left him alone…

Trying to imagine the look on Ms. Bennett's face, he arrived, panting, at the top of the stairs, looking around for the boy concernedly. But the boy was nowhere to be found, his voice still issuing from one of the rooms.

"Aster, come look!"

Aster peeked into the nearest room and felt an unfamiliar smile tugging at his lips, a kind of smile he hadn't given in a long time. "What's up, kid?"

"Did you paint this?" Jack was running his fingers along the wall, his blue eyes wide with wonder. "This is so cool!"

Aster nodded uncertainly, coming to stand by Jack. "You like it?"

Jack couldn't stop the grin spreading over his face. "This is really cool!"

"You like spring, then?" Aster gestured to the blue sky and the bright green grass.

Jack shrugged. "Prefer winter, really. But this…" and he took to touching the mural carefully again, as if thinking the paint was still wet, but after a few minutes, his fingers relaxed, his smile growing wider. "This is so…" he trailed off, his eyes sparkling.

Aster smiled a little, silently touched by the boy's enthusiasm. "Thank you."

Jack finally tore his eyes away from the mural, but the smile on his face didn't fade.


	2. Chapter 2

_**Break of Dawn**_

**A/N: Okay. Now, I know it's short, buuuuuut please enjoy it anyway. It was honestly like pulling teeth to write parts of this, I just could not figure out how I wanted to start this. Now. I can't wait until Jack gets to have more angst, that was so much fun XD Also, I'm listening to Winter Breath by Adrian Von Ziegler as I write this. Is that strangely appropriate or what? **

* * *

Aster normally woke early. It was true he often needed a cup or two – or sometimes, depending on the hour, a whole pot – of coffee to keep himself from dozing, but when the first few rays of morning sun spread their light through the windows, he often rose from the bed then.

This time, as the sunlight poured through the dusty glass of his old house he could hear somebody pacing the floor above him, causing the old floor to creak. He pushed back his covers and sat on the edge, staring up sleepily and rather uncomprehendingly at the ceiling for a minute or two before he remembered Ms. Bennett's business trip, and what it meant for him.

Sighing, he rose from the bed. With all that racket above his head, he wasn't going to get much sleep anyway.

He walked into the kitchen some fifteen minutes later, having showered and dressed in that time and began to put on his morning pot of coffee. When the sounds from the kitchen were met with footsteps on the stairs, he peered around the sunny yellow wall to see the white-haired teenager descending the steps, fully dressed, his backpack slung over his shoulder. He barely seemed to notice Aster standing there as he headed for the front door.

"Morning," Aster said lightly, pouring the coffee grounds into the maker.

"G'morning." Or it could have been something else. The exhausted mumble from the barely-listening boy left a lot of room for the imagination.

"I know that Regina normally drives you to school," Aster said. "But do you want me to—

"Nothankyou." Was that what he'd said, or was it something else? Again, it was such a mumble that the twenty-year-old could barely hear it.

But before Aster could say anything else – not that he would have – or asked Jack what he'd said – not that he'd do that, either – the boy unlatched the door, pushed it open and disappeared from the house.

* * *

When he had originally come here, Jack told himself that things would be different at this school than they had been at any other. He was turning over a new leaf. He was a troublemaker no more. He wasn't going to out-and-out try to get anyone's attention – that would mean being the first to reach out and that was something he wasn't a fan of – or that would mean extra work, something he definitely wasn't a fan of. So, all in all, he'd decided that things at this new school wouldn't be half-bad if he just tried to skate by.

And then the records from his last school showed up, and with it came all the old nicknames, the cold looks from teachers or, sometimes, if that particular teacher was sympathetic, it was simply a raised eyebrow.

If he closed his eyes, he could still see the words, printed in black-and-white, that changed people's minds about him instantly.

"_Jack has a tendency to cause trouble, disrupt class, get in fights—_

He hitched his backpack a little higher on his shoulders, fighting the yawn that threatened. It wasn't a surprise that he hadn't been able to sleep last night. He should have known it, considering that it was his house…wait, what was his name again? Aster? No, Aster didn't seem to like him very much, either. But unlike the people at school, Aster didn't even seem to have a real reason. Jack shifted his backpack again, feeling a shoulder slam suddenly into his.

"Hey, albino," the kid called over his shoulder as he walked away, earning a curious look or two from the other students.

Jack rolled his eyes, running his fingers through his hair. It was a little thing he did when he felt distressed or frustrated. Really, why would anybody bother to taunt him about anything else when clearly his deathly pale skin and nearly white hair already sufficed well enough? His blue eyes seemed to be the only natural splash of color he'd had, and he often never made eye contact with people anyway, so it's not like it mattered. When he arrived in his first class, he slowly let his backpack drop as he took his seat at his desk in the back of the room. There were people in the desks beside him, but as usual whenever the occupants arrived, they gave him a look of disgust and scooted their chairs away from him.

Not that he minded. At least now he could focus on something else than them. He pulled a pencil and a composition notebook out of his backpack, opened the notebook up, and began doodling. When he'd first come here, he'd honestly tried to pay attention to the teachers, and take notes and do well in his classes. New leaf, new leaf, new leaf, he'd tell himself every time the teacher's eyes flicked over to him, every time they asked him a question.

But by now, he had given up. He'd only been here a month and already they judged him, they thought they knew him. Why should he bother trying to prove he was different than what they automatically assumed? He could see the words on the form still.

"_We highly suggest Jack get psychological help for all of his—_

He tightened his grip on the pencil, his lines suddenly becoming harder, thicker, sharper. He could faintly hear the teacher's voice in his ears, but he closed his eyes, ignoring it, just like he did in every other class. It didn't matter what he did, they were all going to judge him anyway. They were all going to make him see that stupid school guidance counselor and suggest therapy to Ms. Bennett whenever they could, and tell her constantly about all the trouble he seemed to be having. And one day, he knew, one day…

It might not be next week, it might not be next month, it might not even be until next year, but one day, Ms. Bennett would get tired of him and she would give him up, too. Just like they always did.


	3. Chapter 3

_**Break of Dawn **_

**A/N: Hi, guys! I don't really like this chapter that much, but whatever. I'm too tired to keep dealing with it. I hope you guys like. Also I feel like its ending was just... ugh xP it's like so stupid. **

* * *

Although Aster loved to paint, this was not what he did for a living. He worked at the bottle toss counter in the low-profile, mostly unpopular carnival, the Warren. By a stroke of luck, he had been looking for a job while they looked for a steady and dependable worker to hand out stuffed animals to the occasional winner and to console the losers while letting them know the game was _not_ rigged.

You couldn't say Aster enjoyed his job, really, but the paycheck was steady and the work wasn't terrible, just tedious. Besides, he found he liked it whenever some kid actually won and their eyes lit up with joy. He didn't interact often with his coworkers, speaking to them only when he had absolutely had to. What could he say? He was a quiet kind of guy.

He ran his fingers through his hair, perching on a stool behind the counter. The place was so empty today, he wondered why they even bothered opening this early. The carnival was more a hangout place for teens more than anything, and, seeing as school was still in session, it's not like they had many customers first thing in the morning.

He let his eyes rove over the carnival, a few motionless people manning the roller coasters, although of course, nobody was on them quite yet. About four or five o' clock was when their rush hour would start, and about the time Aster's shift ended. He hoped he'd be there when Jack came home from school. The whole point of Ms. Bennett entrusting her adopted son to him was so that the teen wouldn't have to be alone. He knew the kid could probably handle an empty house for fifteen minutes or so, but the thought of a kid he barely knew wandering through his house made him feel oddly uneasy.

The uneasiness passed the moment he remembered Jack's sparkling blue eyes, his fingers gliding hesitantly over the spring mural on the wall. Aster closed his eyes, reaching up to run his fingers through his hair again. Innocent-looking or not, he thought these three weeks were going to be some pretty long ones.

* * *

When he got home, the house was empty and dark, the front door bolted, but when he checked, Jack was in the bedroom he had chosen, a notebook in front of him, a pencil in his hand as he considered.

"You doing homework?" Aster shouldn't have been so surprised; the kid was still in high school, right?

Jack shook his head absently, scribbling something down on the notebook. It looked to Aster more like a strange collection of symbols, and he wondered if that was supposed to pass for Jack's printing.

And then Jack seemed to come back to earth with a sudden jolt. He shrugged, not really looking at Aster. "Well, I don't see the point in doing homework, honestly."

Aster instantly went into adult mode. Hey, maybe he was only twenty, but he did have maturity. Probably more than most twenty-year-olds did, considering the number of foster homes he lived in. "Homework is essential," he began, "because I—

"Don't start," Jack cut in. "Please. I don't think you even know what you're saying. I'm pretty sure high school is a lot different now from when you were in it."

A bit stung that he wasn't being taken seriously and also by the crack at his age, Aster decided to defend what he could. "Didn't your parents teach you to respect your elders?" He folded his arms, but the humor in Jack's eyes faded instantly and suddenly he looked very far away.

A frown tugged at his pale lips as he spoke. "Yes, they did." But his voice was no longer light and teasing; harsh and ragged were the correct words, like he wanted to yell at Aster to leave without actually saying it.

_He's been in foster homes, too. _Aster had never really thought of that possibility. He'd assumed that Jack would have had a grand old time in the orphanage, before getting adopted by Ms. Bennett, a woman whom he felt didn't deserve this headache. With the realization that maybe Jack had met some of the worse families out there, his green eyes lost their humor as well. "Hey, mate, I'm sorry."

"Doesn't matter," Jack shrugged. "Say whatever the hell you want, I'm not stopping you."

"Yeah, but I didn't mean…" Aster wasn't good with apologies and this one wasn't any different. He didn't mind the actual saying of the words, 'I'm sorry'; what he minded was what happened after. How did you apologize and remind them you were wrong after they'd told you it was okay, or, in Jack's case, that it didn't matter? "I'm sorry, I just didn't know that saying that would bother you."

"It didn't bother me," Jack snapped, instantly on the defensive. He closed his notebook with a snap, stuffing it back in his backpack. "Now, if you don't mind, I have some clearly _essential_ homework to do…"

"Right," Aster replied, standing up straight from where he leaned against the wall. "Right, I'm sorry. I…just…you do that homework, I guess?"

Jack's lips twitched, threatening a smile. He still looked depressingly faraway, but Aster felt that maybe his words had sort of reached the sixteen-year-old. "Yeah, since it's so essential. Were you even trying to make that argument believable?"

"Homework does…sort of…help," Aster admitted. "I mean, sometimes, yeah, it's completely useless, but if you ask me, some of the _classes_ are completely useless, too."

Jack nodded enthusiastically, before being struck by a sudden thought. "Are you in college?"

And Aster realized that he had never really specified anything about himself. "Uh…no."

"Oh. Do you have plans to go to college?"

"Nope." Aster shook his head. "Do you?"

Jack's response came in the form of a horrified look. "I've got two more years left, why would I go and add another four onto _that_?"

Aster chuckled lightly. "At least you understand why I didn't go."

"Did your parents do anything about it?" Jack asked. "Like, did they have a little college fund for you, and did they take it back or let you use it for something else?"

Aster hesitated on the verge of giving a defensive response. It was his natural reaction whenever anybody asked about his parents. But he managed to bite it back and give something a little more neutral. "No, they didn't."

"Isn't that what parents do, though?" Jack questioned. "Try to convince their kids to go to college and whatnot?"

As if he'd never known parents and what they were supposed to do.

"Uh…" Aster hesitated. "I…have no idea." Because he'd never known them, either.


	4. Chapter 4

**_Break of Dawn _**

**A/N: You should actually thank a guest reviewer for this chapter, not me! That reviewer got me to see how many favorites and follows I have on this, and I realized it wasn't right for me to just give up on this so quickly. So, here's the next chapter. I'm sorry if it's dumb, but I kind of like it. **

* * *

Aster had come a long way from the eighteen-year-old boy who burned everything he put in the stove. He was reasonably confident that his rather small meal of fish and chips was quite up to snuff, but Jack sort of poked at it with his fork, evidently in deep thought.

"You okay, kid?" Aster ventured quietly, unsure how to speak to a teenager, much less one like Jack Frost.

Jack nodded and then raised his head to look Aster in the eye, his blue gaze unusually serious. "Can I ask you a question?"

Unsure what to expect, Aster nodded hesitantly.

Jack leaned forward, as if this question was a matter of utmost importance, and said, "In Australia, do they really say 'g'day, mate'?" The boy put on an accent, but to Aster, it sounded more like he came from the deep South.

For a moment, Aster blinked, confused.

And then he snapped, "Why does everyone think we go around saying that?! I've never even said those words in my life!"

"Alright, calm down!" A grin tugged at Jack's lips as he regarded Aster, and his blue eyes sparkled with mirth. "You look like you're about to blow a gasket!"

"Maybe I am!" Aster snapped, aggrieved. "And I'm glad _one_ of us is seeing the humor in this!" He threw Jack a dark look to emphasize that he was definitely not that one.

There was a few moments of silence between them, and then Jack laughed. Not one of those small, awkward, crap-what-do-we-talk-about-now laughs, but a real one, one Aster had never heard before. He laughed so hard, he actually dropped his fork with a clang, and, after a few minutes, his laughter turned into wheezy gasps as he attempted to stop. "I'm…I'm sorry," he apologized quickly, wiping a tear from his eye when he noticed Aster's glare. "I'm really sorry, I didn't mean to laugh, it was just…your _expression_! You looked so…"

And then this set him off again.

"Yuk it up," Aster snapped, picking up his fork and returning to his meal, deeming this the best route for preserving _some_ dignity. "One day, you'll be begging me to hear all about it."

"Uh-huh." Jack wasn't as repentant as Aster would have liked, but he decided to take it, for now. At least the boy had stopped laughing, after all. "Sure."

"Hmph." Aster's grunt was quiet, but Jack still heard it.

He smiled a little to himself, taking a bite of food. Despite the fact that they'd been sitting at the table for only fifteen minutes, and he was hungry, this was the first bite he'd taken since they'd sat down. He had been too preoccupied first with his thoughts of how things at his new school were going, which was just how he had expected them to, and then had been too busy laughing at Aster's complete overreaction to a simple question. His eyes widened in surprise when he tasted the food; he would never have guessed that the twenty-year-old was that good of a cook just by looking at him. "This is good."

"You sound surprised," Aster grumped, still not quite ready to forgive that last laughing fit. "What, did you think I was going to be serving frozen TV dinners?"

"Something like that," Jack admitted. "Can't blame me, though, can you? I mean, you don't look like much of a chef to me." He took another bite.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Aster demanded, raising one eyebrow.

Jack grinned and shook his head. "Nothing! Boy, you take a lot of things personally, don't you?"

"I take _insults_ personally," Aster corrected. "And you use a lot of them."

"I'm not insulting you," Jack replied. "I'm being _honest_ – I can't exactly see you wearing a bright pink apron with 'Kiss the Cook' on it, can you?"

"Not everybody who cooks wears that," Aster huffed in response. "You watch too much television, kid. First g'day mate, and now this."

* * *

Aster could hear the floor creaking above him until late into the night, the constant pounding of feet across the polished hardwood floor. He stared at the ceiling, bars of moonlight making silvery stripes across the room, and he couldn't figure out why Jack was still awake. He sat up, listening to the little _creak, creak. Creak, creak._

There was normally so much else to listen to that Aster loved about his house at night: the crickets chirping in the summer, the wolves howling in the winter. But tonight, the only thing he could hear was that incessant creaking. He needed to get up and get to the carnival tomorrow, because they'd be short a worker, but that wasn't what was bothering him. He just couldn't help but wonder what Jack was _doing_ up there. He sighed and glanced out the window at the moon, a yawn forcing his lips open. He decided he would just ask the kid what was wrong tomorrow. He didn't like feeling like he should rush upstairs and demand to know immediately. He didn't even know what the big deal was about a bit of creaking from the floorboards. When the house was empty, he always chalked it up to the fact that the house was just settling.

Something might be bothering Jack, and the thought sort of bothered him. He didn't want Ms. Bennett finding out he had done a two-star job of taking care of the kid, after all. Even so, he hadn't realized how late it had gotten until he awoke the next morning and realized he had fallen asleep, right in the middle of his thinking and worrying about Jack and the creaking and Ms. Bennett.

The floor wasn't creaking when he got up that morning and began to make breakfast. The coffeepot hummed soothingly, and the pancakes sizzling on the stove were a familiar sound for Aster's alien feeling. He heard footsteps on the stairs and he turned to greet Jack, the spatula in one hand, a plate in the other. He flicked a few pancakes onto the plate as he spoke. "Morning."

"Morning," Jack mumbled, hitching his backpack higher on his shoulder.

"How'd you sleep?"

"Fine."

"You know, I heard some noises from upstairs last night." Aster set the pancakes down in front of Jack and tossed him a stick of butter and some syrup. He thought it best to be doing something as he spoke, to make his concern appear casual. Concern, of course, for Ms. Bennett's benefit, he insisted to himself. "Were you moving around up there or something?"

Jack had been drowsily drowning his poor pancakes in syrup, but at these words, he shrugged. "Yeah, I just have trouble sleeping sometimes. Thanks for the breakfast, it was great." He shoved two huge bites in his mouth, adjusted his backpack and was out of the kitchen in the time it took Aster to hear what he had said.

"Wait, you didn't even eat," Aster protested, leaning around the sunny yellow kitchen wall to see the white-haired boy fumbling with the front door's locks.

"I'll be fine, lunch isn't far off," he shrugged, succeeding in opening the first lock and then the screen. "Bye!"

The screen swung shut behind him and Aster was left standing alone with a rapidly burning pancake.


	5. Chapter 5

**_Break of Dawn_**

**A/N: This chapter isn't really my best work, but it's angsty as heck, and I think a certain friend of mine is going to like it xD sorry for my long absence, guys. I've been sorta busy (blowing this off...) **

* * *

Aster carefully maneuvered his car into the nearest free parking space, looking around as the students spilled out of the building. He had been let off his shift surprisingly early and there could be no harm in saving Jack from a ride on the school bus. He was willing to bet that those vehicles hadn't gotten any more hygienic than when he was in school. When he spotted the white head of hair in the crowd, he reached over to kill the engine, but something stopped him.

Jack wasn't alone. He was standing, kind of awkwardly, with three other boys, all bigger and taller than he was. Aster prepared to wait until he was finished discussing things with his friends, but then he realized the way they were standing: the biggest boy in front, the smaller, shorter ones on the sides, all three of them towering threateningly over Jack. To his credit, the smallest boy didn't appear afraid; he was glaring at all of them, and his pale lips moved, forming words that Aster couldn't read from the distance.

The boy in front of him reached for his arm, yanking his backpack off and holding it in a death grip. Jack appeared very disinterested in this; he scowled and said one more thing before stalking off, not even bothering to try and get his backpack. The boy holding it seemed put out by either this, or the final thing Jack had said, because he curled his left hand into a fist and swung out, catching the retreating, blue-hoodied back.

Aster barely registered the look of pain and surprise on Jack's face as his blue eyes went wide; his blood began to pound in his ears, and he did cut the engine then, opening his car door, slipping out, slamming it. He practically ran across the schoolyard to reach the place where they stood, crowding around the crumpled form. Jack rose to his hands and knees, trying to swallow.

"Get away from him," Aster's voice sounded low to his own ears, but by the way the first two boys flinched back, he didn't think it was.

"You ain't the boss of me, _sir_," the boy in front stood his ground, sneering, placing an emphasis of disrespect on the title.

"Stop." Jack rose to his feet, coming in between the two, putting a hand on his back. "Just stop. What are you doing here, Aster?"

Aster sent the three boys a murderous glare and picked Jack up by his hood, causing his feet to break contact with the ground. "I was coming to pick you up, c'mon."

"Put me down!" Jack commanded, with surprising vehemence. He kicked at thin air, trying to maintain a bit of dignity. "Put me down!"

Surprised by the sudden anger in the boy's tone, Aster complied, dropping him onto the asphalt. Jack glared at him for a second or two before stalking to the gray car.

Aster remembered the backpack, and dashed back across the schoolyard. The boys had fled the scene, apparently not as gutsy as they looked, and the backpack lay abandoned. He picked it up, examining the fraying straps with an unimpressed air. Jack really needed a new one, didn't he? And his back… Aster would definitely be checking that when they got home.

He walked back to the car, opened the door and climbed into the driver's side. He tossed the backpack at the boy without making eye contact. "I'm going to do something about those kids," he muttered, turning the key in the ignition. The engine roared to life.

"No!" Jack's voice came out loud, quick, and forceful, which was unexpected. As Aster eased out of the lot, he saw, out of the corner of his eye, that the boy was glaring at him again.

"Why not?" he demanded as he drove away from the school, adjusting the rearview mirror. His turn signal flared to life as he waited for a break in the stream of cars.

"Nobody listens to me in that place." Jack sent the building a dark look before his gaze flitted back outside the window. "It's no use trying to make them see my side of things."

"What do you mean, nobody listens to you?" Aster frowned.

Jack dropped his eyes to his lap, his hands clenching involuntarily into fists. "Leave me alone."

"I just helped you," Aster snapped, finding that his anger with the boys was quickly turning into anger towards Jack. "You could stand to let me in on what you're saying."

"Helped me?" A pink flush spread from Jack's ears down to his cheeks. "I didn't need help! I was dealing with it on my own!"

Aster's hands tightened on the steering wheel. "You were lying in the grass moaning! That's not dealing with it!"

"Leave me alone!" Jack's yell was so loud that Aster felt certain that other people could hear it.

"Put on your seatbelt," Aster bit out.

"No thank you," Jack seethed.

"It's not an option," Aster glowered. "Put it on."

"You're not my guardian, or my parent, or anything. You have no say in what I do."

"You're going to get thrown out of the car if you don't put it on!"

Jack did something surprising then; he flinched. For a moment, he shrank down just slightly, as if waiting for something. His hand hovered dangerously near the door handle, as if he was thinking of trying to escape.

Aster stared at him for a second, trying to think of what the boy's guarded expression reminded him of. It made him think…it made him think…his stomach clenched. He looked like the kids in Aster's orphanage, the ones who'd come from the worse homes. The ones who jumped at loud noises, and cowered before angry adults. The quiet, obedient ones who never stirred up trouble, but who acted like cornered animals when adults caused _them_ trouble.

"Jack…" His voice was very quiet, but he couldn't find any words of comfort. "I'm not…I'm…"

The white-haired boy lowered his head even further, a few strands of hair breaking loose from the rest and dangling in front of his eyes, shielding his face from view so Aster couldn't read his expression.

"Look, Jack, I…" Aster had never been good with apologies. "I…I didn't mean to yell, I'm sorry…"

"Aren't you going to throw me out of the car?" Jack's voice was not his regular one; he sounded mean and angry, like he was trying to force himself to be tough. Aster could hear the truth; just beneath the surface, his voice was shaking horribly. His tough act was only skin deep.

But the man's green eyes widened, and, as odd as it was, he almost laughed. Was that why Jack was so scared? Because he thought that Aster was literally going to throw him out of the car?

He pulled up onto the roadside, taking his hands off the wheel and focusing entirely on the boy in front of him. "I'm not throwing you out of the car, mate."

"Then what are you doing?" Jack tentatively peeked up at Aster, but then he dropped his gaze again, unable to look at the man in front of him. He pretended to have found something very interesting outside the window. "Are you going to hit me?"

"No." Aster's voice was barely above a whisper. "No, of course not. I…I was telling you to put on your seatbelt because I don't want you getting hurt, not because I was going to hurt you if you didn't comply. I'm…I'm sorry, I didn't think…I shouldn't have lost my temper like that. When I said you'll get thrown out of the car, I meant that if you get hit, you'd get thrown out into the street from the impact."

"Oh." Jack withdrew his gaze from the window, choosing to study his pale hands instead. "Right."

Aster watched the boy for a few more seconds and then reluctantly pulled back into traffic. Jack didn't put on his seatbelt.


	6. Chapter 6

_**Break of Dawn **_

**A/N:** **SURPRISE**

**Yes, this is the surprise. Updating all of my eighteen in-progress fics at once. It was pretty crazy, but I did it, and it's here, and good day to you all! I had tons of fun doing this, so I hope you guys have tons of fun reading this!**

**Blehhhhh horrible chapterrrr **

* * *

To Jack's relief, Aster seemingly couldn't think of anything more to say, and the remaining twenty minutes of the drive passed in thick silence. Aster kept sneaking peeks at the boy in the passenger seat, but Jack merely pressed himself closer to the window whenever this happened, pretending for all the world as if he were the only person in the car, as if believing would make it so.

"Hey, mate," Aster ventured, uncharacteristically nervous, when at last the awkward car ride was over and they stood on the porch of his house. "How's your back doing? I mean, I saw that guy—

"It's fine," Jack replied impatiently, attempting to jerk his backpack higher up his shoulders, but this was proving difficult considering the broken straps. "It happens all the time, it doesn't matter anymore."

Aster, who had been on the verge of putting the key in the lock, abandoned all attempts at being casual, turning sharply to stare at the boy. "This has happened _before_?"

Jack nodded, apparently unconcerned with this bit of news.

"But why didn't you ever tell—?"

"Ms. Bennett? She's got enough trouble without adding in some stupid kid that she adopted for kicks." The white-haired boy sounded unexpectedly bitter. "And can you open the door, please? I hate it out here."

Aster reluctantly obeyed, still gazing at the boy as if he had never quite seen him before. "I…I didn't know what they were doing to you," he said abruptly. "But Regina didn't adopt you just for kicks, mate. She took you because she—

"Realized I was really _special_, yeah," Jack interrupted sarcastically. "Don't waste your breath, I've heard it all before, Aster. It's just a bunch of lies cobbled together for five-year-olds, not kids like me." He stalked into the house, crossing the living room and heading for the stairs.

"That's not true," Aster insisted, following the boy into the house, taking the keys out of the lock and slamming the door behind him. "Regina really does care about you. And I would know, I mean, I'm—

"Don't," Jack snapped. "Do you think I don't see it? I'm not completely stupid, even though you think I am. Ms. Bennett is just gonna dump me back like everybody else has, I mean, it's nothing new, it doesn't bother me."

"Jack—

"Leave me alone." The sound of his footsteps on the stairs at last faded away into silence, and the door slammed shut.

Aster sighed, lifting his eyes heavenward as if praying for patience and advice, but he merely went to his own room, trying to put Jack from his mind.

* * *

The rest of the day passed uneventfully, although it did pass quietly for both of them. Aster, used to being alone in his house, almost forgot that Jack was there several times throughout the day, only to remember when he heard the creaking of the floorboards from upstairs once again.

Knowing he could only put off the moment when they had to talk again for a few hours at most, Aster reluctantly trudged up the stairs late that evening, to inform Jack that dinner was ready. He went up and knocked on the door, hearing what sounded like shallow breathing on the other side.

"I'll be right out," Jack called at once, and Aster realized that the door was locked. This, however, didn't bother him in the slightest; on the contrary, it was a welcome excuse to put off their next face-to-face encounter for maybe ten more minutes.

"I was just coming up to tell you that dinner was ready." The man spoke through the wood of the door, already turning to leave. "Just hurry, or your food will get cold." As he made his way back downstairs, Aster rather thought he heard the door to the upstairs bathroom opening and then closing again, but he didn't turn around to check. He just hoped Jack stayed in there for a bit, because he honestly had no clue how to broach the subjects that the teen had brought up in his anger.

Exactly how did one talk to Jack Frost? Aster didn't even have a clue, yet the quiet dinner looming over him told him that he'd better learn quick.

The bathroom door opened again as Aster reached the kitchen, setting out two plates on the table and filling them with the casserole he had managed to cook successfully. He felt rather proud of his cooking skills on this occasion, he thought as Jack appeared in the doorway.

The sight of him seemed somehow strange to Aster; his normally pale face was flushed and his blue eyes appeared rimmed in red, but he sat quietly at the table and didn't speak until Aster did.

"Um…hey, mate…" The man tried cautiously, taking it as a good sign that Jack raised his head to show he was listening. Aster took a seat at the table, and the white-haired boy did the same. "You know what you were saying earlier, about—?"

"Forget it," Jack interrupted at once, picking up a fork and stabbing rather viciously at his plate.

"No, wait—

"If this is about what happened at school, drop it," the boy insisted angrily. "I don't want to talk about that, you saw what happened anyway."

"No." Aster replied slowly. "I…I wanted to talk about what you said…about Regina adopting you."

"Oh." Jack dropped his blue eyes back to his plate, instantly becoming more subdued. "Aster, look, there's really no point—

"Regina didn't—

"Look, just leave me alone, okay? It doesn't matter why or why not Ms. Bennett adopted me when she's just going to toss me back in a couple weeks."

"You can't honestly believe that, kid. I mean, look at her – she loves you."

"No, she doesn't," Jack replied angrily. "She's just like all the others, okay? They adopt a kid, but they find out he's messed up or he comes with flaws and things and they chuck him back because they want a kid, but they don't want to do the work. Or worse, they _do_ want to do the work, they're more than willing to do the work. And they see me as some little project that they can fix, but they don't see that I'm not, that I'm effing _unfixable_."

For a moment, Aster could only stare at him, taken aback by his tirade. "Mate…you…I…we…it…it's not like that! I mean, Regina doesn't see you as a project, she doesn't think of it like that! She doesn't think you need to be fixed!"

"I'm sorry, but where is your proof of that?" Jack snapped, sounding unusually angry. Aster had never seen him this wound up before, and it surprised him.

"It's what everybody who meets an adopted kid thinks," Jack shrugged, correctly reading the shock in Aster's expression, already turning to head back up the stairs.

The boy was almost at the top of the stairs, his back rigid, his hands clenched into fists by his sides, but Aster whispered the words anyway. "I don't."


	7. Chapter 7

_**Break of Dawn **_

**A/N: Well, here's a rather short seventh chapter. It's not really angst, though XD it's actually rather fluffy, and I have no idea why. Except for Aster's angst at the beginning and end there. But he's good for Jack, cuz he's screwed up and Jack is screwed up and they've both known what it's like to feel like the only way someone could care about them is through pity. **

* * *

For a moment, Aster simply sat staring at the spot where Jack had disappeared, before rising slowly to his feet and gathering up the plates, dumping the uneaten food in the trash. As he did this, he couldn't help feeling angry with the boy upstairs. Here he was, looking out for the kid and giving him a temporary place to stay, and he had the nerve to act like an overgrown toddler.

Aster's hands were shaking as he all but tossed the plates in the sink, his cheeks red with temper. He mastered himself just long enough to set the plates carefully down before running his fingers through his hair and beginning to angrily pace the kitchen. Two weeks and three more days of this madness, and he was no closer to getting along with the kid than he had been four days ago. He sighed softly as his brow slowly cleared.

Did he really have the right to get angry with Jack, after he'd done the same things? Aster had felt the same way, spoken to Regina in the same manner, yet she hadn't given up on him. Maybe she had gotten angry from time to time, but she had never spoken a harsh word. He took a deep breath, trying to ensure that he wouldn't be tempted to do so, either.

Aster gave himself a few more minutes in the kitchen before walking resolutely up the stairs and rapping hard on the door of the second bedroom.

Jack did not answer. As if he thought the silent treatment would make Aster go away. The kid was stubborn, but he was stubborn, too.

He pushed open the door to find Jack sitting on the bed, one knee pulled up to his chest as he gazed moodily at the carpet.

"This has got to stop," Aster didn't wait for a greeting, letting the door slide closed behind him as he approached the bed.

The moment they were close enough to touch the other, Jack flinched back slightly, as if expecting a blow or a harsh rebuke. His red-rimmed blue eyes flicked restlessly between Aster and the door. "What has to stop?"

"Number one, the pity party," Aster said, grabbing the pillow off the bed and swatting the boy gently with it on the shoulder to coax him to his feet. "It's my house, my rules, and we don't do that here."

Jack swallowed, picking at a loose thread in his pants. "And, um…what else?"

"Number two, anything bad about Regina is automatically taboo here. No more saying anything like she took you in out of pity. That's pig's bum, and it's dramatic as hell."

Jack's thin lips twitched. "It's what?"

Realizing he had slipped into his familiar lingo, Aster scowled. "Pig's bum. Means what you're saying is ridiculous."

Jack's small grin widened.

"Don't you dare laugh!" The man warned.

That did it.

Jack did laugh then, genuine and bright and happy, the smile gracing his features worth it all.

When at last he had quieted down, he added softly, "I'm sorry I was so…you know, downstairs."

"Dramatic?" Aster suggested. "Rude? Completely and totally—

"Yeah, yeah," Jack scowled. "You can stop at anytime."

"But I don't want to," Aster teased. He ruffled the kid's hair fondly before becoming serious again. "Apology accepted. And listen, Jack, I know that I said bad stuff about Regina is taboo, but you should know that I thought and said some of that stuff, too, when she adopted me."

"Whoa, whoa, wait, back up." Jack gaped at Aster in disbelief. "Ms. Bennett adopted you?"

"I was fifteen," Aster responded evenly. "And let's be honest here, I was really awful to Regina some days. She didn't stand for that, but she was never unkind to me, either. She should have kicked me out a long time ago, but she didn't. She stuck with me."

Aster watched Jack's face for his reaction; his expression was tight again, closed, his jaw clenched.

"She's never gonna hurt you, mate."

All was silent between the two for a moment.

"Thank you, Aster."

"You're welcome, kiddo."


	8. Chapter 8

_**Break of Dawn **_

**A/N: Before I leave you all to read this chapter - I AM SO SORRY FOR ABANDONING THIS FANFICTION, I'M SO SORRY D: I honestly MEANT to update, but it was hard because it was winter...and this is a story set in spring, so... you know what, I should have set it in autumn, because autumn and winter are my favorite seasons, but I went for spring in the first chapter and it's too late to change it now, basically. But I am done with posting on this story once and then abandoning it for like, six months at a time. Okay? I seriously am. I'll try to update more often in the future.**

**WARNING: Mentions of child abuse within this chapter. Please don't read if you could be triggered! **

* * *

Jack wasn't prepared for Aster to keep sitting there. He was used to his temporary housemate avoiding any and all contact and conversation with him unless courtesy demanded it, so he naturally expected the man to rise from his spot, mumble something in the way of a goodbye, and then exit the room hastily. This was not what happened.

Aster just kept sitting there, like he was waiting for something. Maybe he expected Jack to say something more. The boy cast around for an explanation to excuse himself, but nothing was coming to him at the moment. He clenched one fist around the thin blue blanket on his temporary bed, but no words came. Because that's all this was. Temporary. Everything he said today, everything he did in this moment would not exist in three weeks. He could spill everything he'd been keeping inside to this man, and it wouldn't matter in the slightest. The problem with temporary things was that they were so fragile. He expected everything around him to shatter when he so much as breathed.

Jack hesitantly lifted his icy blue gaze to meet the steady, emerald green above him. Aster frowned as if just remembering something, and jumped up. "Oh. Can I check your back? How's it feeling? I saw that guy, he really packed a wallop."

A sudden horror gripped Jack as a blush tainted his pale cheeks. No. Aster could not see his back. If he ever saw what was beneath the blue hoodie and the white T-shirt, if he ever guessed…the boy's hands clenched into fists again, though it was involuntary this time. "Um…no, no thanks. I don't need that. It feels fine, actually." So long as he didn't sit up too quickly or too straight, he added to himself. He knew about getting punched in the back, so he knew to be careful when sitting and standing.

Aster's mouth dragged down at the corners. "May I still take a look?"

When Jack continued to hesitate, the man added, "I promised Regina I'd look after you, but I can't do that unless you let me." It sounded odd, but it was true – he could have smothered Jack with all the care in the world, but it wouldn't have made a difference if Jack hadn't been affected by it.

The boy in question shifted restlessly, cutting his eyes between the man and the door. He didn't want to get into another fight with Aster so soon after their last one had been resolved, and he really, really didn't want to risk getting smacked for not complying. But at the same time… He swallowed, standing slowly so as to keep the pain at bay. It was just pain. He would take a beating over Aster discovering… "Really, Aster, it feels fine. I don't need anyone to look at it. I would be able to tell if something was seriously wrong, and I'm sure it's just going to be bruised." As he talked, he slid his fingers down to the hem of his hoodie, tugging it as far down as it would go. Whatever Aster said, the hoodie was not coming off, and it was not going up, either.

The man didn't seem to realize Jack's determination to win the argument. "Mate, I really want to look at your back. Even if nothing is really wrong with it, it would put my mind at ease."

Jack felt himself tensing up. This was one argument he couldn't afford to lose. "I would really rather not."

"Why are you being so difficult about this?" The man seemed unable to grasp the concept.

"It's nothing, Aster," Jack replied lamely. "It really is just a bruise, I…I…" Sometime during their talk, the man had stood from the bed and unconsciously, Jack had started backing away from him. The backs of his knees found the edge of the bed, and he fell onto the mattress backward. Fear crawled up into his chest and throat, rooting there. He had nowhere to run. Aster would block him if he tried. He was cornered, completely trapped. He could feel himself shaking. _Why wasn't Aster hitting him yet_?

Jack weakly tried to restart, tried to make more excuses, but the man was already crawling onto the bed with him, putting a gentle hand on his shoulder. "Mate, I just want to look, alright? I'm not gonna be like those people who push on it and ask if it hurts, I promise," Aster's emerald gaze sparkled with humor as he spoke. He gently lifted the hem of Jack's hoodie, eyes scanning the pale back critically. He didn't expect to see any true damage, so the purplish bruise already blooming surprised him. It started at the small of his back, where it was already darkest, and the contusion grew fainter and fainter the farther up it went, finally fading back into pale skin when it was about halfway to his shoulder blades. For a moment, all of Aster's attention was fixed solely on the bruise, so he didn't notice anything amiss with the youth's back until he made to drop the hoodie again.

To put it plainly, Jack had scars. They covered his back, half-hidden within the bruise, and ran up and down his shoulders. They grew particularly prominent in between his shoulder blades, but they were all white and faded, long since received. For a moment, Aster's mind flicked to the kids he'd known in the orphanage, the ones who resisted when it came to undressing in front of other people, the ones who were often accused of self-harm. Aster himself had never gone this route, but his first thought was that Jack had. Immediately, he banished the thought. He'd had a friend among the self-harming kids, and as far as he remembered, none of them had ever chosen to cut on their backs. They said it was risky because they couldn't see what they were doing, and they might end up cutting something important. Aster tossed the idea around in his mind for a second or two, letting the hoodie drop back down.

Jack gave a small sound that sounded almost like he was trying very hard not to cry. Regardless of how harsh he'd been, it'd been a hard day for the boy, Aster realized, feeling a little contrite. The last thing he probably wanted to talk about was those scars, but the man felt he had to address them. He struggled for a moment on what to say. "I'm sorry, mate," he finally managed, his voice sounding a little shaky. "I'm sorry…I didn't know."

Jack still had his back to the man, but he kept his shoulders tense. He wouldn't turn around. "It's fine." He pushed himself off the bed, trying to get to the door before he did something completely over the top. He clenched his hand into a fist, his short nails digging into his palm. That felt a little better. The pain cleared his head, at least.

"No," Aster got off the bed, too, following him to the door. He put a hand on Jack's shoulder, effectively stopping him from leaving the room. "I mean…Jack, I had no idea, I…" his voice trailed off as he remembered the boy's reaction in the car that day. The look of a cornered animal, the way he pressed himself into the door to be as far away from Aster as possible…the man swallowed. Was Jack…was Jack _scared_ of him? The thought made him uncomfortable. "Mate," he suddenly crouched down a little to be Jack's height, seized by a sudden desire to be_ absolutely_ clear. "You know _I'd_ never hurt you, right?"

Jack swallowed; Aster could see the movement in his throat, the tendons and muscles in his neck tight like he was fighting some sort of natural impulse. "Yeah, I mean…sure, I guess."

This wasn't absolutely clear, and nowhere near the answer the Australian man would have liked, but he surrendered, stepping out of the way to let Jack pass. For some reason, the boy kept standing there. Aster wondered awkwardly what he was waiting for. And now Jack was blinking at _him_ like he expected him to leave.

"Okay, then." Aster reached behind himself for the door. "I guess I'll just…go downstairs, then."

He quickly stepped outside, practically running down the stairs in his haste to be away from everything that had just happened.


	9. Chapter 9

_**Break of Dawn **_

**A/N: This chapter is completely ridiculous and yet I really like it xD I'm sorry for not updating sooner, but hey, this was sooner than the last gap in updates, eh? Gotta give me some credit for that. This chapter was written purely because I needed fluff to cushion the angst soon to come. I can't promise chapter 10 at a certain date, but I can promise that it won't take me six months. It won't even take me four months, probably. Maybe two, but not four. **

* * *

Jack would never stop marveling at the fact that his body remembered what day it was before his brain did. He always had trouble sleeping on school nights, mostly because he was so busy dreading the day ahead that it left little room for sleep. Some nights, he was too restless to even try, and thus ended up pacing the floors, unable to lie still for such long periods of time.

Other times, nightmares kept him awake, so vividly terrifying and real that he had to find ways to cope with that, too. Of course, his best method was not always an option in Aster's house…he shuddered to think what would happen if the man ever found out. It was clear that he already wasn't afraid to do things Jack was uncomfortable with, like getting in between him and those guys at school even though there was _absolutely nothing freaking wrong with the situation and Jack had it under control_. Or when he'd lifted up his hoodie…

Anyway, what with one thing and another, although Jack generally had trouble sleeping, he wasn't at all surprised to find that he fell asleep fairly quickly that night, for when he awoke the next morning, he realized it was Saturday. He hadn't really been thinking about the date yesterday, but of course it must be. He shivered a little as he slowly sat up in bed, rubbing the last of the sleep out of his eyes. It was cold in here, considering it was spring, or nearly there, anyway. Then again, he'd lived in Pennsylvania all his life, so the wacky weather of Burgess didn't bother him in the slightest.

He tugged at the hem of his hoodie to keep it as far down as it would go as he descended the staircase slowly, stiffening the moment he caught sight of Aster, sitting at the kitchen table, looking extremely grumpy, and cradling a pale green coffee mug in his hands. He couldn't believe he'd almost forgotten what had happened yesterday, and so nearly entered the kitchen without a proper plan of action in mind. He hung back a little, pressing himself against the wall as he struggled to think of what to do. It wasn't hard; it was what he always did in situations like these: pretend nothing has happened.

He slowly walked into the kitchen, noting the displeased expression on Aster's face. "What's wrong?" He ventured tentatively, sitting down at the kitchen table across from Aster so he could face him.

Aster grunted in reply, shoving his chair back from the table. "You want some breakfast, kid?"

"Sure," Jack shrugged, though he rarely felt hungry in the mornings. It was easier to eat than explain, after all.

"It's snowing," Aster commented, sounding grumpier than ever as he grabbed a pan from a cabinet under the sink and put it on the stove.

It took a second for the man's words to reach Jack; he wasn't really listening, allowing his eyes to drift over the kitchen instead. The moment he understood, however, he jumped out of his chair in excitement. "It is?"

Perhaps it was the involuntary and completely unstoppable grin taking over his face that was making Aster look at him that way, but before the man could say anything more to him, he'd bolted over to the kitchen window to see for himself. White powder blanketed the grass, probably just dry snow and not good for much except skiing, but Jack let out a shout of joy anyway, immediately abandoning his post by the window and rushing instead to the front door. He unbolted it and was out in the yard in seconds flat, glorying in the feel of pure white flakes falling down on him, drinking in the sight of the winter wonderland around him, unable to stop shivering but absolutely enjoying every moment.

"Jack, what are you doing?" Aster's annoyed voice cut through the white-haired teenager's joy, and he shifted his gaze back to the porch, to see the man standing there with his arms wrapped around himself, as if to lock in heat.

"Um…looking at the snow?" Jack didn't really know what answer Aster expected him to give, but it clearly wasn't that, judging by the other's snort.

"Get back inside, you're not wearing anything!"

"What?" Jack looked down at himself in confusion; what was wrong with what he was wearing? He had on the jeans he'd fallen asleep in last night, his favorite blue hoodie, of course, for he so rarely took it off these days, and the white T-shirt beneath that. Was there something wrong with what he was wearing?

"You need a jacket," Aster hastily reworded himself, folding his arms in annoyance.

Jack gestured to his hoodie wordlessly.

"That's not a jacket," the man replied, "that's barely a garment, it's so beaten up. C'mon, back inside, before you catch frostbite."

Jack groaned loudly, but consented to follow Aster back into the warm house, where the man insisted he put on socks and sneakers – if he didn't have snow boots, that is, and he didn't – and then he made him eat something before he'd even let him think of going outside again.

"Alright, where's your jacket, Frostbite?"

Jack wrinkled his nose, surprised by the new nickname but deciding to ignore it. "I'm wearing it."

"I told you, you need something thicker."

"I don't have anything thicker," Jack replied, partly because this was true but mostly because he didn't want to go upstairs again and look.

Aster raised an eyebrow, asking a silent question.

"I swear, you can't even let me go outside without forcing me to meet some sort of safety guideline…" Jack started, but the man sighed wearily, held up a hand to silence him, and disappeared into his own bedroom for a minute. Jack couldn't tell if he planned to come back or not, so for a minute, he considered going outside anyway and just assuming he'd won the argument, but just as he reached up to unbolt the door again, Aster returned, carrying a huge, thick gray…cloth death trap, Jack decided after a brief inspection. Definitely a death trap.

Yet the question of why Aster would have a death trap in his room entered his head, so maybe he was wrong. "What is that?" he asked, hoping his horror didn't show on his face.

"It's proper attire for the weather outside today," Aster replied, reaching the boy and handing it to him. "Go on, put it on."

Aghast, Jack realized the thick cloth death trap was not actually a death trap at all, but a coat. A perfectly awful gray coat. "I'm not wearing this! I'm already wearing proper attire!"

"No, you're not," Aster told him in a bored voice. "I'm serious, Frostbite, if you get sick, your wellbeing's on my head. Regina would kill me. Now put it on."

Jack maintained a stony and dignified (he hoped!) silence as he shouldered his way into the death trap. The coat appeared to have been made for someone twice as tall as the sixteen-year-old, and at least five times as wide. He'd always considered himself pretty tall and muscular, but it was immediately clear that Aster had a good two feet or so on him, not to mention his shoulders had to be ten times as broad.

"I hate this coat," Jack muttered bitterly.

"But you don't feel cold anymore, do you?"

"Aster. I can't feel _anything_."

"It'll build character," Aster replied. "Now, if you're going out, go on."

"Hey, wait, hang on, how come I'm not allowed to go out without proper attire, and you are?"

Aster didn't respond immediately; he disappeared once more into his room, emerging again with another jacket, though it was of a reasonable length and thickness.

"Why are you allowed to wear that one, and I have to wear this…this…_death trap_?" Jack demanded, irritated.

"I'm an adult." Aster grabbed a battered paperback novel off the arm of the sofa and stepped outside, the boy following soon after. "And I'm not going to be frolicking in the snow, like you – I'm just going to be on the porch."

"You're going to _read_?" Jack stepped onto the sidewalk and spun sharply to face the man. "You're not even going to appreciate the snow?"

"Not everyone likes winter as much as you, Jack," Aster told him, settling himself in the chair on the porch. He glanced briefly up, amusement in his gaze. "I'm actually surprised you like it so much."

"I _love_ it," Jack corrected, his face an expression of pure bliss before remembering the stupid coat/death trap Aster had forced him into. He glared down at his "proper attire" with a displeased frown on his face, and when Aster turned his attention to his book, the opportunity was too good to resist. Besides, he'd never actually had someone to have a snowball fight with before…

He scraped up some of the snow off the ground, formed it into a rough sphere, and threw it directly at the man on the porch. The expression on Aster's face was too good; laughter bubbled up in Jack's throat the sight of it, bursting out into the air.

The man's green eyes narrowed, and though his tone was flat, every word carried across the snow-covered yard as he wiped the icy slush from his cheek. "What. Was. That."

"Two things," Jack told him. "An icy sphere of pure winter joy, and revenge for this…death trap."

Aster's eyes twinkled in badly hidden amusement. "It's not a death trap, Frostbite, it's a _coat_. And I told you," he continued, setting the book down in the chair and walking out into the snow so they no longer had to raise their voices to be heard, "Regina would never forgive me if something happened to you while she was away."

Jack rolled his eyes. "Yeah, _right_."

"Don't start that again," Aster warned, but, contrary to his belief, Jack looked surprised, then confused before his expression cleared to make room for something akin to sadness. He lowered his eyes to the snow, and for a moment, a somber mood threatened to overtake them. Jack was certain that Aster was recalling everything that had happened the previous day, especially the scars and the bruise on his back, and just as his discomfort reached its peak, something hard and icy smacked him on the face, and he looked around, startled, half-expecting to see Aster with his hand still raised. But his hands were down by his sides, flecked with snow, and he was laughing at Jack's reaction as the boy wiped the snow from his cheek in surprise. It was rare that people actually took him by surprise; he must have been really distracted.

"That was uncalled for." He managed to get the last of the snow off his face, but Aster was still looking too amused for his taste.

"You threw a snowball at _me_," Aster pointed out, sounding remarkably immature for a man who was supposed to be four years older than the kid he was looking after. "You started it, I was just retaliating."

"No, you started it by making me wear this ridiculous death trap!"

"It's a _coat_!"

"Whatever this thing is, I'm declaring war!" Jack announced dramatically, as he began to form another snowball.


	10. Chapter 10

**_Break of Dawn _**

**A/N: Well, this chapter was hard to write. Especially Jack's nightmare. It was incredibly draining, and I still don't feel like it came out wonderful, but I guess I'll leave that up to you, the readers, to decide. Just tell me whether it sucks or not. Actually, I'm too sensitive for that, so maybe not. xP Anyway, thank you guys for the reviews! :D Wow, look at us, we're over one hundred! Thank you so much! **

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The house was blissfully warm when Aster reentered, drenched in steadily melting snow and clutching his paperback novel, Jack following close behind. Aster could hear the boy's wet sneakers squeaking on the foyer floor as he edged around to stand in front of the couch, already struggling to get the coat off. It seemed he didn't want to be in the "death trap" as he called it for any longer than he had to.

"So, officially, I won that," Jack grinned cheekily at the man before refocusing his attention on the buttons as he talked.

"No, I'm pretty sure I was the winner of that," Aster argued, watching the boy struggle for a second or two before coming around in front of him, kneeling slightly to help undo the buttons.

"Oh, please," Jack snorted, "you were the one who squealed like a girl when it got too cold for you." His eyes sparkled with amusement as he spoke.

Aster's fair skin flushed a brilliant red. "Look, do you want help getting out of this coat or not? Because I could leave you in this—

"No, I want out of this!"

"Good. Then stop making stupid comments."

If the white-haired boy flinched slightly at the flippant use of the second-to-last word in the sentence, Aster didn't notice.

_Now I remember why I quit wearing this coat_, he thought to himself as the buttons simply refused to separate, remaining stuck together as if they had been sewn that way. The stupid buttons had had a tendency to jam, not wanting to let their occupant go. Maybe Jack had had a point when he'd called it a "death trap". Not that Aster would ever let on, of course. He didn't want the boy getting smugger than he already was.

"Alright, now c'mon. Sit." Aster motioned for the boy to have a seat on the couch, having finally freed him from the death trap coat. He flung the soaking wet coat over the arm, allowing it to drip onto the foyer floor for a minute or two while he retrieved a beat-up quilt that he thought he might have gotten at Goodwill. He draped it over the boy's small form which, he realized now, appeared to be quivering slightly from cold. He clucked his tongue disapprovingly.

"Can I go back outside today? It's probably the last snow day of the season, and I don't want to miss it." Hopeful blue eyes peered up at the man.

Aster shook his head. "Give it 'til at least after lunch. You need time to warm up."

Jack gave a dramatic sigh, flopping back on the couch like all was lost. The twenty-year-old grinned slightly at his antics, adding slyly, "And of course, when you go back out, you'll have to wear the coat, too."

The sparkling, sky blue eyes widened. "No!" Jack protested – well, more like begged, really. "Not that coat _again_! It looks ridiculous, and it's way too big on me!"

"Are you insulting my hospitality, Frostbite?" Aster raised his eyebrows carefully, taking the seat next to Jack on the couch and grabbing an afghan for himself. "Would you rather not have the coat and freeze to death?"

"It's not cold enough for that!"

"Oh, yes it is, if you stood outside long enough."

"Well, I'm not planning on parading around in my long johns, am I? Go on, be a sport. Don't make me wear that coat again."

Aster cracked a small smile, but remained firm. "No, I'm sorry, kiddo. Regina did leave you under my care. That means she trusted me enough to look after you, and I'm going to do that – even if it kills me," he added teasingly.

Jack made a face. "Well, that coat's going to kill _me_, if I have to wear it again."

Aster shook his head, giving a small chuckle as he ruffled the kid's springy white hair. "You want something to drink? I could make some hot chocolate or coffee to warm you up faster."

"Nah, I'm…I'm fine. I'm plenty warm."

"Yeahhhh, sure. Your lips are practically blue, kid. Your name might be Jack Frost, but you are not immune to getting a cold. And what would Regina say then?"

"Oh, Regina, Regina, Regina, is that all you can think about? If you were truly trying to impress her, you wouldn't have subjected me to that death trap!"

"It was a _coat_!"

* * *

_Jack's heart was pounding in his chest, crawling up into his throat. The pain from the beating was just a mere thrum in the background of his mind, but the reminder of the beating was swift whenever he tried to move. He could feel himself shaking, staring up at the man who towered over him, salty tears dripping off his face, falling onto his tongue and chin, blurring his vision. But he didn't need to see the man to know he was there, those eyes like smoldering embers constantly watching him, even when he was all alone. His voice was so smooth, so velvety. The women could describe it as "charming", but to Jack it was just cold. He knew what that voice could do. He shuddered just hearing it again._

"_L-leave me alone," he blubbered, his face screwing up as he started to cry again, burying his head into the carpet, trying to tell himself that if he couldn't see the man above him, the man couldn't see him._

_His battered little body was wracked with the terrible shudders both from fear and from the cold drafts drifting in through the cracked windows and slashed curtains. "Please…please…no more…not again." Jack's lip trembled, but the man was angry tonight, and there was to be no reprieve from the pain. "I'm s-sorry, I'm s-sorry, I won't be any trouble ever again, I'll b-be good, I'll be g-g-good, please!" His blue eyes swam with tears as the man stepped closer to him, surveying him with unmistakable rage._

"_You won't be good enough to make up for what you've done today." That velvety voice was laced with malice, and Jack could not understand how so many people could find that voice "charming" when it could be so mean. He knew then that begging would do no good, and he could feel himself shaking with fear as the man drew nearer and nearer, his hot breath a warning. _

_Jack forced himself to control the tears. All that crying and whimpering would do no good, because nobody was going to burst in here and save him, no matter how hard he cried. He knew this from bitter, painful experience; he could not count the nights he had stayed awake crying and begging for his mother. But he knew better now. Nobody was going to come in here and save him. Nobody loved him. He had memorized a lot of things that the man liked to tell him, but there was one he knew best, one he knew now was true: Jack Frost did not deserve a mother._

_He sniffled, wiping away the remnants of his tears, forcing himself to be brave. He tried to straighten his tiny shoulders, pulling himself into a sitting position. The man came closer still, and Jack's heart sped up, his courage crumbling away. He was scared. He didn't want to be beaten anymore. He met the man's gaze, those smoldering amber eyes, but much good it did him. The pain started then, started anew, startlingly fresh. He wanted his mother again, even though he knew he did not deserve one._

Jack Frost awoke with a start in the darkened bedroom, a scream pouring out of his mouth.


	11. Chapter 11

_**Break of Dawn **_

**A/N: Hooray for Saturday, woo-hoooo. This week has not been a ton of fun. Actually, to be honest, it's been pretty shitty. So I'm glad I got a chance to post this, and I'm glad the week is over. Next week's gotta be better, right? Thank you guys for all the reviews. Without them, this story probably would have fallen by the wayside a long time ago. I'm pretty crap at keeping up with stories, if you want to know the truth. But we shall focus on the good parts of today. So, please review, please enjoy. **

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Everything was blurred because of his tears. He was crying, crying so hard he could barely see anything, and his chest hurt from the force of his sobs. He couldn't find it in himself to make the noises stop; everything just kept pouring from his mouth in a long, unbidden stream. He knew he was being noisy and that soon the man with the velvety voice would come into the room and shut him up, and oh, he wanted to reach for his razor, his safety net, but he was afraid of being seen. Nobody could see him drawing his own blood when he'd sworn to protect them from all of this.

The room was spinning and footsteps were echoing distantly on the stairs when he finally regained control of himself. He must be quiet now, no matter what the man with the velvety voice did to him. He must be quiet, like a good little boy, and he mustn't scream, because that would wake the others. He wouldn't cry for his mother, because he didn't deserve a mother. All he deserved was his razor.

Looking around the bedroom with open eyes this time, he realized he was not in the steel room anymore. There were no other beds, just his, where he lay drowning in darkness and fear. The room was empty, but the doorknob was rattling…if it wasn't the man with the velvety voice, then who was it? Who was coming? Had he woken them?

His brain hurtled to catch up with his body, but he simply couldn't. He was tired, too tired to keep thinking about all this. He needed to sleep. Maybe he could deal with this in the morning? But no, now the door was opening, so he'd better apologize to the person, just in case they wanted to hit him for being woken up. But even as he lifted his head, the words already half-formed on his lips, strong arms wrapped around his shoulders, pulling him close, shaking him roughly, demanding to know what the matter was and suddenly he couldn't think. Where were the blows, the yelling, the rough voices telling him to shut up and go to sleep?

The person was still talking above him, asking him a million questions, but he couldn't answer. Instead, he leaned into them, attempting to choke out or maybe whisper the words, but his voice wouldn't work, anyway. It felt hoarse and sore, and he wondered momentarily if he had screamed. He couldn't remember anything very well anymore.

"It's okay, it's okay, just tell me what's wrong…" This person was warm, and this person was real. Suddenly, their solid chest and strong arms meant safety and light and trust. Jack didn't know he knew, but he knew he could lean on them whenever he needed to. He curled up closer to the sound of their voice, resting his head, letting his eyes flutter closed. He was getting tired again, and he didn't really want to answer. Why dredge up the bad stuff when he suddenly felt so warm and safe? That kind of stuff belonged in the shadows, and this person just seemed to radiate light. He just wanted to hold onto them.

"No. Hey, listen." The person kept running their fingers through his hair, and if they wanted him to stay back, why were they being so comforting and soft? "Listen, tell me what's wrong."

It wasn't an order. It was spoken like one, but it didn't feel like one. And Jack didn't want to let this person down, not when they had been so nice to him. "It hurts." He was so tired, and his throat hurt when he tried to speak, but he forced himself to keep talking. This person wanted an answer, and he wanted to give this person what they wanted. "People. They're hurting me all the time." This wasn't what he had set out to say. "He hurts me…and my mother doesn't come, because I don't have a mother…they told me I don't deserve a mother." His face crumpled, and suddenly he wasn't tired at all. He wanted his mother, and he knew this person wasn't it.

"Jack."

Why was this person even still holding him? He wondered blearily.

"Nobody…nobody's gonna hurt you, alright? That's a promise."

He had never been promised that before. It was the most wonderful promise he had ever heard, so he settled closer to the person holding him. Maybe they weren't his mother, but they were like his own personal light, and they made him feel warm and safe and loved, and he wanted to fall asleep again feeling like that. So he kept leaning against that solid chest, listening to their reassurances, feeling them running their fingers through his hair and rubbing his back, trying to comfort him.

"It's gonna be okay, Jackie."

His eyes flew open at the sound, and he was suddenly pushing against the person, but his arms were so tired from pushing everyone else, so eventually he just sagged against them again, but he spoke. "No. Don't call me that. That was her nickname for me. No one else's."

He conjured up a mental image of her as he talked, long brown hair, big brown eyes that sparkled with excitement, laughter and love and joy evident in every word she said. For a moment, he imagined her up, imagined that she was there, too, because even though she couldn't hug or touch him like the person holding him, she was there with him in spirit, and that made all the difference.

* * *

Things were moving so quickly Aster couldn't even fathom them. First, there had been a scream, and when he'd rushed upstairs to see what the problem was, Jack was sobbing and shaking on his bed, hands covering his face, as if trying to hide from him. He wasn't sure what would calm the boy down, so he firstly tried asking what was wrong, but that got him absolutely nowhere. The kid was too far gone to understand him, so he hesitantly put his hands on the boy's shoulders, trying not to show his surprise when Jack immediately responded to the touch, leaning into the man's chest, still sniffling. But his tears were definitely slowing, now.

Aster stopped his frantic smoothing of the kid's springy white hair, staring down at him in astonishment, but after a minute, he remembered himself, hastily returning to his previous task. He wasn't sure what else to do, because Jack was even now beginning to drift off in his arms again, and he couldn't think of any way to stop this. He needed to know what was wrong. He held the boy at arm's length to examine the deep circles under his eyes, huge blue pools that glittered with tears and seemed suddenly too big for his face.

"No, listen, listen, tell me what's wrong."

The boy appeared to be thinking over the question with more focus than was really required; he chewed his lip thoughtfully for a second or two before answering. "It hurts."

Was he in pain? Aster wondered, mystified. If he'd had to guess, he would have said a nightmare, not physical hurt.

"People," the boy continued, unaware of the man's thoughts. "They're hurting me all the time…he hurts me…" His voice was growing thick, and hard to hear. "And my mother doesn't come, because I don't have a mother. They told me I don't deserve a mother." He started crying again, crying hard, and Aster almost robotically put his arms back around the shaking frame, but his thoughts were whirling a mile a minute. He? They? Who were these people? He'd assumed, whoever had made Jack act scared, and left scars on his back – he'd assumed that had been his parents. But if he didn't have a mother…rage made the man's gut clench. Why in hell would they have told this kid – this wacky, brilliant kid – that he didn't deserve a mother?

He realized he had been entirely silent and still for the past few seconds while Jack cried into his shoulder, so he hastily resumed his small comforts, trying to tell him everything was going to be okay. "Jack…" but he couldn't make the right words come. All he could think was that this kid deserved more than empty words. "Nobody's gonna hurt you, alright?" Aster wouldn't let them. "That's a promise."

The kid's shoulders relaxed, and he peeked up at the man, his face tearstained. He didn't speak, just curled ever closer into Aster's chest, and the man felt him going limp. He must be falling asleep. "It's gonna be okay, Jackie."

There was a strangled noise, and suddenly the kid was pushing away from him, glaring up at him with a kind of fierce yet sleepy intensity. "No. Don't call me that. That was her nickname for me. No one else's." He slumped against the man again, a yawn forcing its way through his lips.

"She?" repeated a baffled Aster, glancing down at Jack. But the boy didn't respond, for he was almost asleep again already.


	12. Chapter 12

_**Break of Dawn **_

**A/N: I'm so sorry for the long wait! I'm so sorry! Writer's block and lack of motivation and all those horrible evils just plagued me until I surrendered D: for weeks at a time, yes. Anyway, this is like, a reallyyyyy angsty chapter. It's pretty long, too. I can't tell if that's something to be celebrated or not. Well, you guys decide! And also decide whether this chapter is any good or not! **

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Shadows were a funny thing.

Like reflections, but different. Shadows were dark and they were only visible when the sun was out. So very hard to catch, but so fun to play with. How many nights had he sat up, making shadows on the walls to make her laugh, manipulating the darkness to make her forget the painful, cruel, scary, dark world outside? How devotedly he had loved the shadows before they solidified. Before they became a person, a man with a velvety voice and high cheekbones and cruel eyes and hands with long fingers. He'd known then that this person was darkness, all the way through. Some people were not like that. He'd known some people who were dark on the surface, but light at their core. Those were the people who appeared bad to the whole world, but were really very nice and misunderstood. Mostly they were children.

Shadows used to be his only solace and now they were his eternal torture. How bitterly he loathed the darkness now, how cruelly he hated the shadows. Because shadows solidified and they made him hurt and they made him bleed and they made her afraid. Shadows had started the slow death, but he'd been the one to pull the trigger, in the end.

Jack Frost dreamed about shadows often.

Jack Frost had screamed about them more times than he could count.

Jack Frost was too afraid of them too much.

Jack Frost thought about them constantly.

Maybe there would be a day when he'd never have to face them again.

He could see shadows even now.

"It's okay. You're okay."

He was? He did not think he was. He rather thought he was crying. Why would anyone be trying to tell him anything at all was okay, when everything was falling apart around him? And always, he was left standing in the wreckage of the pathetic, stupid accident he called his life, left cursing his own existence, wondering why he had lived when so many others had died.

"Jack. Jack."

_No._ He didn't want to enter the living world again so soon, for he knew where he was: perched precariously on the brink between life and death, locked in a fate that was too cruel even for his lot.

"Jack, mate. C'mon. Come talk to me."

_Mate? Who the hell says 'mate', anymore? _Jack wondered to himself, before feeling strong hands in his hair, running persistent fingers through wayward whitish locks. The term bit at his memory, forcing him to become aware of more and more in the waking world. He was leaning against somebody and he could feel the deep, rumbling vibrations of their voice from where he lay, ear pressed against some sort of fabric. Cold. He was cold. He wanted warmth.

"Mate? You still with me?" He felt the voice more than heard it now, but he dared open his eyes, blinking rapidly to hopefully banish the threatening tears. They watered, anyway, when he opened them, only to be met with harsh, glaring spring sunlight streaming in through the window. Was it morning already?

"Jack, mate, wake up."

"Sthhhoopkalinmemahte."

"What?"

"Stop…stop calling me mate."

"Wake up, kiddo. C'mon, mate."

Wait a second, he recognized this voice…but he just wanted to shut everything out…

"Stop it."

"_Jack_. Wake up."

No, he did know that voice…he did…Ms. Bennett's friend from across the street…Ms. Bennett's…business trip…Ms. Bennett's—_Aster?! _

He raised hesitant blue eyes to look at the man, realizing that it was Aster's chest he'd been leaning against this whole time. Oh, if he had a rewind button on the remote of life right about now…

"Good," the man grunted. "You're awake."

_Not _good. Not good at all. He wanted to go back to sleep.

"Now, c'mon, I want to talk to you."

"Aster…" He sank deeper into the warmth before remembering it was _Aster_ he was leaning against, gruff Aussie Aster who rarely ever spoke except in grunts and hardly ever smiled at all. What was he even doing in Jack's bed? Was he…oh, God, no, he couldn't be, nobody could ever be as horrible as the man with the velvety voice, nobody could ever be as cruel as him…no, no…he was suffocating, he was drowning under this crushing weight, these shadows trying to make him one of them, _no,_ _he couldn't stand it, he couldn't_…

"Whoa, mate, you okay?" Aster's large hand found his shoulder.

"Don't! Don't touch me! Stop it!" Because he wouldn't beg this time, the way he had those times. He would. Not. Beg. He could run if the man refused. He could run away, maybe. He had to try, at least.

"Frostbite. Calm down. Frostbite, it's me."

Did Aster think he was _stupid_?

"Frostbite. I'm not going to hurt you."

_Why_ did people bother with _empty words_?

"Frostbite." There was something in the man's voice this time that made Jack listen and hesitate, for a moment. It was firm and hard and steady, yet not threatening or mean. And there was something about this moment, this whole crazy morning, with the Aster's arms around him, holding him awkwardly, his own, thin body sagging with the hunger and sadness and exhaustion of sixteen years.

"Listen up, Jack, I'm not gonna hurt you."

The boy vaguely registered the sudden return of his real name, and for some stupid and indefinable reason, this made him sad. He dropped his gaze to the bed. "Then what are you doing here?" Better get that out of the way first. If Aster didn't come up with a ready, believable excuse in the next ten seconds, he was out of here.

"Well, you woke me up screaming your head off." The answer was accusing, yet the tone was completely devoid of such a feeling. "I come bursting in here thinking something's wrong and you…" Even though Jack wasn't looking at him, he could feel Aster's emerald gaze, drinking him in, looking at him, seeing things, judging things and deciding what to say.

That was okay. That was okay, for the moment. Jack didn't want to know what he'd done, because the thing was, this excuse actually was perfectly believable. He must have dreamed about the shadows again and now Aster was going to make him talk about them.

The man cleared his throat, earning Jack's attention again. Nervous sapphire eyes flicked hesitantly up to meet uncertain, wavering emerald.

"…You fell back asleep."

Then why was Aster holding him like a child when he'd awoken? He swallowed, deciding on a different question. "What are you still doing here, then?"

"I…" The man looked away first. "I didn't want the sh…I mean, I thought maybe you might want somebody here when you woke up again."

To be honest, Jack would rather have been alone when he woke up again, but he merely gazed at the man and said nothing.

"I guess I was wrong," Aster continued heavily, and the way he was deliberately not looking at Jack only drew more attention to the fact that he wasn't. "I'm sorry I made you uncomfortable."

He had made Jack uncomfortable, the boy realized, but there was something else he'd made him feel, too, some sort of emotion he couldn't quite grasp yet…something he didn't believe he'd ever felt, but desperately wanted to experience again.

Jack's throat hurt from so many tears. "It's okay."

"Are _you _okay?" The question was abrupt.

"I…"

_No. _

"Y-yeah. I'm fine."

"What…" For a second, the man looked quite unsure how to continue before plunging on ahead anyway. "What were you dreaming about, anyway?"

_I can't tell you. I can't tell anyone. I have to take this to the grave. I want the secret to live and die with me._

It was hard to swallow again. "Nothing important."

"Jack, you were _screaming_. You said things."

"It wasn't anything important."

_Don't get angry. Just don't get angry. Remember not to get angry. Just keep smiling, keep smiling, keep staring, don't scowl, don't frown, don't flinch, don't feel…_

"I'm notstupid."

There was that word again. He hated that word. He would obliterate it from existence, if he could. It was a terrible word that no one should ever be called. He hated that word, because it described him so perfectly. "Really, it wasn't anything important. You know those nightmares people have where they're like, being chased by bears or something like that? That's what I was having. See? Nothing important." He stood from the bed, determined to end the conversation. "I'm hungry, aren't you?"

"Jack, I want to know. I'm not playing."

_Maybe it's none of your business. _"Look, I'd really rather not say."

"Jack—

_No, get him away, get him away and don't get angry, you can't get angry now, don't frown, don't flinch… _

"I have to go to the bathroom." His razor had never sounded sweeter.


	13. Chapter 13

**_Break of Dawn _**

**A/N: Well...a new chapter? It's angsty, I know that much. Oh, but just you wait. *cracks knuckles* this angst? It is nothing to what's to come. Haha. Hahaha. MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, OH IT SHALL BE DELICIOUS AND MANY TEARS SHALL BE SHED AND JACK SHALL NEVER HEAL HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Okay, alright, I'm done. I promise.**

**WARNING: _SELF-INJURY AHEAD. PLEASE DON'T READ IF YOU COULD BE TRIGGERED._**

**UPDATE: This chapter was taken down due to difficulties. I'm fairly certain I've done everything I can, but don't be alarmed if it disappears once more. (I'm really sorry about this) **

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Jack's thoughts were a curious jumble, a random mixture of his nightmare, and Aster holding him and him trying his hardest not to get angry and failing and knowing without a doubt that he had to take his secret to the grave and knowing he must never tell anyone, must never let it slip, and knowing today was not destined to be a good one, with a morning like that. But mostly his thoughts were centered on his razor by the time he'd made it into the upstairs bathroom and locked the door, feeling a swift sense of relief just from being away, from having a physical barrier between himself and the man, with all his kind gazes and touches and questions.

He stood like that for a minute, one pale hand clenched around the knob, the other resting, palm flat, on the actual door. A beat passed before he turned away, resting his back against the whitewashed wood, hands going instantly to his hoodie pocket, searching for his razor.

His fingers met cool metal and he slowly tugged it away, examining it, watching the bathroom lights playing off the silver blade. It was so much more than a razor to him. It was his one certainty in life, and the only solid thing in the world he had to grip onto. In a life where he burned through foster homes faster than clothes, in a world where he had practically memorized the phrase "it just isn't working out", his razor was the one thing he could count on, the only thing that would never abandon him because he wasn't good enough for the rest of the world.

He rolled up his sleeve, curiously fascinated by the way the rough blue material bunched and wrinkled around the pale skin of his arm. He pushed it all the way up to his elbow before turning his arm over, eyes falling immediately upon the scarred skin, overrun with scratches and old and new cuts and puckered, healing burn marks. There was scarcely any skin left on his wrist that didn't carry an injury, whether healed or fresh. There was scarcely any skin left on his wrist – or arm, really – that showed through anymore. He readied the razor, feeling the cool, light weight of it in his hand, as he had so many times before. He searched for a new place to cut, as he had so many times before. For a moment, he thought he might have to move farther down on his arm, as he had once or twice, but eventually, he found a blank space on the side of his wrist, pure and untouched, unscarred, like a perfect, clean slate. But people like him didn't deserve clean slates.

Nothing made him feel like his razor did. When the whole world abandoned him, his razor was always there, ready to bite into his skin with such force that it placed him in a kind of furious ecstasy. His razor was always there, always ready to tell him that it was okay, that it was right there for him whenever he needed it, and it would always be there, even though no one else was. His razor was his _sanctuary. _

The blade broke the skin, beads of blood rising immediately to the surface of the newest wound and pain, wonderful pain, lit up his nerve endings with a fiery light, reminding him that he was here, that he was alive. The tight knot of pressure and panic that had been growing in his chest since he'd woken up that morning suddenly loosed as he unrolled a bit of tissue paper off the roll and pressed it to the cut, letting it soak up the red liquid. He steadied the tissue with one hand, keeping it firmly pressed to the side of his wrist, but his eyes danced up and down his arm, searching fruitlessly for another place to cut. With a sigh of resignation, he moved farther down his arm, letting the blood-soaked tissue fall to the floor, letting himself bleed again as he drew the blade across his skin.

Sometimes, he wondered how he had ever managed without the razor. People might say it was weak, to turn to a blade for relief, but the way he saw things, talking about it was useless. Why dredge up all the shadowy shit, why talk it out when you could _bleed _it out? The strongest men were all the silent.

He reached for the cabinet above the sink with his uninjured arm, fingers seeking bandage boxes and finding cough drops and sleep aids instead. Deciding to forego further examination, he hiked himself up onto the sink, resting his knees on the marble counter and opening the door wider, to get a better look. Finally locating the sought-after box, he slid carefully off the counter again and began washing the blood away, watching red mix with clear water, watching it turn everything pink and red and orange, watching it all wash down the drain.

When he opened the bathroom door, Aster was already downstairs in the kitchen. Jack swallowed as he reached the bottom of the staircase, peering around the yellow kitchen wall to see the man running his fingers through ashy blond hair, looking stressed and tired and sad. He looked much older than twenty years. The boy withdrew behind the wall again, taking a deep breath to stifle the guilt, trying to shove down all his fears. He couldn't hide out forever. He couldn't. The man would begin to get suspicious if he stayed away much longer.

It took all his courage to enter the kitchen, and he half-hoped he wouldn't be noticed, but almost immediately Aster's green eyes sought him, his exhausted expression relaxing into something a little less tired, a little less old. "Oh, good, you're here."

"Mmn." Jack gave a noncommittal grunt, hoping this would not be taken as an invitation to ask questions.

"I've got an idea."

Okay, now he was listening, because an idea sounded a hell of a lot better than questions. Slowly lifting his eyes from the dirty kitchen floor, he met the man's gaze and swallowed. "Okay."

"Why don't you go upstairs and take a shower…"

Normally, Jack was not open to propositions that began with 'why don't you go upstairs and take a shower', but at the current moment, anything was better than what he had been expecting.

"…And then you come back here, we eat some breakfast and go?"

"Go?" Jack frowned, leaning against the sunny kitchen wall. All trace of snow from the previous day had vanished, every snowflake melted to make room for approaching spring. "Go where?"

"Anywhere. Let's just _go_ somewhere today."

"And…?"

"And nothing. We just go."

"We don't have to talk?"

"Not if you don't want to."

Jack was warming to this idea, but he still had reservations. "About anything?"

"Not about anything," the man confirmed. "Let's just get out of here, go somewhere, do something. Alright? That sound good?"

"Actually, yes." The boy nodded. "That sounds _really_ good."

"Go upstairs and shower, then. I'll wait."

* * *

Fifteen minutes, probably all the hot water in Aster's heater, and two pancakes drowned in maple syrup later (Aster wouldn't let him leave the house until he ate something, still determined to prove to Regina that he could take care of her adopted son for three weeks), they were in the car, the key in the ignition, cool air blasting through the vents. The clinks issuing from the man's seat reminded him to buckle his own seatbelt and he did so quickly, hoping Aster wouldn't recall their last disastrous ride in here together. He didn't want to think about anything today, not if they didn't have to talk about it.

"So." One hand on the steering wheel – Jack was pretty sure that wasn't the way things were done in Driver's Ed – and other hand fiddling with the knob for the radio, the man began to speak. "Where do you want to go? What do you want to do?"

"M-me?" Jack stuttered, surprised. "What do _I_ want to do?"

"Yeah, sure."

"Uh, well…" To be honest, Jack couldn't really think of anything, despite living in Burgess all his life. He didn't want to go somewhere where they'd have to spend money – he'd already been enough of a burden on Aster with everything that had been going on lately, and he certainly didn't need to add anymore to the weight the man currently bore on his shoulders.

And also, he didn't know if anyone had ever asked him what he wanted to do before. In fact, as far as he could remember, he had never gone out with anyone like this. He swallowed, turning his gaze instead to the window, watching the scenery fly by. "I don't know," he finally admitted with a shrug. "I can't think of anything."

Aster raised his eyebrows; he had actually, to tell the truth, been quite prepared for a positive barrage of ideas the moment they got in the car. At a loss for anything else and feeling now like he ought to be the one to find them something to do, the man offered a weak suggestion. "I've got an employee discount on the Warren, you know. It's kind of young for you, I think only the really little ankle-biters actually ride the rides and stuff, but some older kids hang out there on weekends, and you might enjoy yourself."

The only response the man received was a blank look. "The Warren?"

With a start, he realized he'd never explained his current work to the kid before. "The Warren," he hastened to explain, and then fell silent for a minute, as if he didn't know what to say. "It's…it's my workplace," he added quickly. "It's a carnival."

There was a beat of silence.

"You like carnivals, Frostbite?"

Instead of answering the question, Jack wrinkled his nose. "Why do you keep calling me that?"

Aster colored slightly. So the kid had noticed the nickname. "Well, you like winter, don't you?" he said defensively. "A-and your last name is Frost! And your hair is white!"

An unreadable yet closed expression crossed the boy's pale face, darkening it, something flashing dangerously in his blue eyes. Normally, those eyes sparkled with wonder. Aster didn't think he'd ever really seen them flash with rage. "It's blond."

"You—you're kidding me," Aster protested, glancing at the definitely_ not_-blond hair hiding the pale forehead and thin eyebrows from view. "Mate, if you're a blond, you've got to be the lightest blond I've ever seen."

"Maybe I am," Jack responded, something in his deep voice suddenly resentful. He sank suddenly deeper in his seat, staring out the window, an expression not unlike fury crossing his youthful face. The face looked too young to hold such an expression of pure hatred.

"Okay." What with everything that had already happened this morning, and the last time he'd pursued a subject the kid hadn't been keen on, Aster figured that, at the current moment, it was best not to push him. Still, he refused to walk on eggshells, so he made a mental note to himself that they would most definitely talk about this later – and everything else, too. "So I guess you're a really light blond, then."

Silence fell for a moment before the man remembered his earlier question. "So…do you like carnivals?" He was careful to edit out the nickname this time.

Jack relaxed visibly as the subject shifted smoothly. He leaned slightly forward in his seat, straightening his spine almost imperceptibly. "Well…" he dragged out the admission, shrugging jacket-clad shoulders. "I've never actually been to one before, to tell you the truth."

"What?" Aster exclaimed in honest disbelief. He supposed, what with the kid having lived in an orphanage so long, and the recently-dropped hints about his undoubtedly dark past, he should have seen this coming, but the man was honestly surprised. He immediately turned his blinker on, swerving into the required lane. "C'mon. We're rectifying that. Right now."

"Aster, seriously, I don't—

"C'mon, kid." He made the turn neatly. "It's time for your first-ever carnival experience."


	14. Chapter 14

_**Break of Dawn **_

**A/N: This is chapter 14! There will be more of Jack and Aster at the Warren, but for right now, this was all I could write without it feeling...rushed and squishy. You know? Well, I hope you like it, anyway. Thank you for all the reviews, guys! You make my day with them! 170, wow! **

* * *

Strangely enough, it was the noise Jack registered first. It hit him like a hammer, all the sound, so deafening it almost took on solid form, brushing, beating against his skin, pounding against his head, rocketing around inside his skull.

Jack did not particularly mind loud things, being the prime example of one himself, but after the events of the previous night, he felt anxious and jumpy, nearly leaping right out of his skin only to find what had startled him was nothing at all. All the same, he stuck closely to Aster as they entered the carnival, but realized instantly this might not have been the wisest choice.

Immediately, people peeked out at him from behind tents and from booths: a fortune-teller with a real crystal ball seated on the table in front of her, a magician who swirled his cloak mysteriously and winked, the lights of the Ferris wheel glittering behind it all, casting a reddish-orange glow over the pavement beneath their feet. A few people manning the rides stopped to say hello to Aster, but Jack barely looked at them – he was utterly entranced by it all, the sights and sounds and tantalizing smells of the carnival.

Yet when the fortune-teller, an intimidating-looking woman with graying hair, a beaky nose, and a long purple robe that exposed only her face, hands and metallic gold fingernails, peeked out from behind her crystal ball and scooted just a bit closer to him, saying something about free palm readings – he didn't hear her quite right, over all the other noise – he decided maybe he liked it a little less. Unsure what to do, he drifted slightly away from Aster, holding his hand out hesitantly. "M-me? Were you talking to me?"

"Sure thing, sweetheart," she told him, obviously mistaking his half-extended arm for a willingness to have his fortunes foretold. Quick gray eyes snapping immediately downward, her fingers closed around his wrist, turning it over so the palm showed instead. Her gold fingernails lightly scraped the lines as she examined them. "Smart," she murmured, and Jack couldn't tell what she was talking about. He wondered if she was commenting on one of the lines of his palm. He was pretty sure his hands would not give credit where credit wasn't due, and if the red letters at the tops of his schoolwork were anything to go on, he most definitely was not smart.

"Innocent…"

She was wrong there. He was not innocent.

"Rich love line…"

Jack was intensely aware of how rapidly his cheeks were flushing. This woman did not know what she was talking about.

"Short lifeline…" murmured the woman, leaning ever closer in apparent concern. "Very short…"

"C'mon, Luna, stop scaring him." When strong, firm hands found his shoulders and his immediate reaction was to relax into the touch, Jack twisted to look at his savior – and immediately wished he hadn't. Since when had Aster become a safe haven? "The kid's with me."

The woman's earrings clinked as she shook her head. "Wouldn't dream of it, darling." Yet she winked as they walked away.

"Don't listen to her," Aster growled.

"I wasn't planning on it," Jack told him, recalling what the woman had told him about a "rich love line".

"Luna just likes messing with people," Aster informed him.

"Can she actually tell the future, though?"

"She…she _says_ she can."

"Well, she was totally wrong about me anyway," Jack replied, hurrying to keep up with the man's huge strides.

"So, what do you want to do first?" Aster gestured to the carnival at large, a glittering labyrinth of green and blue and purple, rides and tents and booths, the fire-engine red Ferris wheel sticking out noticeably, in pride of place. Jack could see people climbing up into it even now, and wondered, for a quick, wistful instant, what it would be like to be that high, so far up that the sky was all you could see, the clouds your only ceiling, so close you could reach out and touch them if you so wished. He wondered how it would feel, to come back to earth after being in the air so long. Would you ever truly be able to touch the ground again?

Aster noticed the direction of the boy's gaze, but said nothing.

Jack forced his eyes away with a small sigh, turning to look at Aster, giving a little shrug. "I don't know."

"Do you want to take a look around?" To tell the truth, Aster was not exactly chomping at the bit to get on the Ferris wheel. "I mean, there's a ton of stuff here, kid – we've got a water ride, and a pend—

"Cool!" The exclamation, issuing from somewhere to his right, let Aster know that the boy had abandoned the conversation long ago. Jack was staring up in awe at the walkthrough. "Can you ever listen to anybody for longer than two seconds?" the man griped. "I mean, _ever_?"

"Can we go in here?" Jack pointed enthusiastically, looking ready to jump up and down in his excitement. "I've never been in one before!"

And this answered his question, Aster thought. Jack couldn't listen to anybody. Nonetheless, the kid looked so happy right now that he couldn't bear to do anything to rain on that particular parade. Still, he made sure to move deliberately slowly, sure it was agony to the impatiently waiting boy beside him.

Once inside, however, Jack quickly regretted his rashness. He'd been thinking there'd be a couple warped mirrors, maybe a moving floor or two, but stepping into the walkthrough, with its slanted walls and tilting floors, was extremely unsettling. "This is weird," he muttered uneasily, taking a cautious step forward. He liked to think of himself as quite a coordinated person, but he was finding it difficult to keep his balance in this place.

"It's called the Crooked Room," Aster explained. "We'll be out of it in a second. There, look – we're almost to the Mirror Room."

"No, I don't like this, I want to go back," the boy protested, his voice unusually high when he spotted their doorway – the gaping mouth of a laughing clown.

"This was your bright idea, Mr. I've-Never-Been-In-One before," Aster reminded him.  
"We're seeing this one through to the end."

"I'm not crawling into the mouth of a cannibalistic clown," Jack told him, suddenly remembering every single horror story he'd ever read about carnivals – and there had been a _lot_.

"Well, you can't go back," Aster informed him. "They lock the doors once you're inside, you know." And, with no expression or hesitancy on his face, Aster stepped right through the terrifying clown mouth and into the next room.

"Okay, wait for me!" Jack called; he had no wish to be left alone here, and he certainly didn't plan on wimping out on something that Aster could do.

He raced through the clown mouth like he was being forced to choose his own manner of death.

"Wow, I feel like you deserve some applause," snickered Aster unhelpfully.

Jack shot him a venomous look. "I hate you. And clowns." He glanced back at the doorway with a shudder.

* * *

It was once said that once you'd lived through a trauma, your view of the whole world – not just yourself – was forever changed, warped, distorted. You would heal, but you would never be the same again, never see things exactly as they were. To put it simply, it was like living in a funhouse mirror. Jack himself had never heard these words, but if he had, he would have fully understood what they meant, staring at himself in one of the mirrors, his shape growing taller, then shorter, then fatter, then thinner with each one he passed.

He stopped to glance into one, reaching hesitantly to touch the glass, fingertips just inches away when Aster's voice startled him. "Oi, don't touch that – I might be the one cleaning it if you do. You have no idea how many greasy fingerprints I scrub off every day. C'mon, kiddo."

"And the idea of you having to clean this is supposed to discourage me?"

"Oh, shut _up_. Come on, we're almost through."

Thankfully, the last few doorways were clown-free, and the pair made it through without incident. Stepping, blinking, back out into the bright sunlight, Aster added, "Oh, by the way, they never lock you in when you're in a walkthrough. Just thought I'd let you know."


	15. Chapter 15

_**Break of Dawn **_

**A/N: This is chapter fifteen! I can't believe we're already at fifteen chapters! And I know what needs to happen within the next few chapters to make this story rip out as many souls as possible-I mean, push Aster and Jack closer. xD Of course I only have the best intentions for little Jack...**

**Okay, seriously, show of hands, who has actually written a legitimate Jack-is-happy-and-it's-all-fluff story? I'm pretty sure there's nobody :P And besides that, people love the angst, so the angst must go on. **

* * *

"I cannot _believe_ you made me go through that whole thing."

"I cannot believe you're still complaining about it."

An affronted noise left the boy's throat, and Aster had to laugh before swiftly changing the subject to spare himself from any more complaints. "Anything else you want to do here? I guess when we've hit all the best things here, we could find somewhere else to go…I've heard there are a couple new movies out this week, so we could always—

"Look! Aster, Aster, Aster, Aster, look!"

"Ordinarily," the man replied dryly, "I tend to pay attention after you've said my name _once_."

Perhaps Jack missed the sarcasm in the previous statement, or maybe he just didn't care – either way, he didn't respond to Aster's words, instead choosing to place his hand on the man's arm in the hopes of holding his attention, pointing to the train winding its way around the carnival, carrying a few screaming little kids. "Look, look, it's a train!" The boy's face flushed, practically glowing with excitement as he tore his gaze away long enough to look up at the man once more. "Isn't that _cool_?!"

Aster groaned inwardly.

"I assume," he winced as the words left his mouth, "you want to go on it after those ankle-biters are finished up?"

The lack of enthusiasm in his voice seemed to curb Jack's, because his smile dropped slightly. "We don't _have_ to," he shrugged, but he looked extremely disappointed.

Aster did not find the train cool, to tell the truth. But it was the safest ride Jack could have discovered. And more than that, it would make the kid happy. So, with about as much griping and grumbling as he felt the train deserved, Aster waited for it to circle back around before dropping the required amount of money on the counter and reluctantly climbing in, hesitating for a moment on the point of sitting down. He noticed with some trepidation that the seats were very small. And they were supposed to be _benches, _he realized after a few minutes' inspection. If Jack sat in the same compartment with him, the kid would end up in his lap instead of on the bench.

However, he didn't get a chance to point this out to Jack before the kid was already climbing in the compartment, an expression of such excitement on his face that he seemed years younger than he really was. He plopped himself down on his side of the bench, and for a minute, Aster really thought all would be well. The kid was thin, so thin he managed to seat himself comfortably on the bench with no visible trouble – but he was tall. Aster figured he had a good five inches on the kid, but Jack was still too tall to really fit, and as a result, it seemed to Aster that the kid's legs were everywhere. Those things had to take up at least half the compartment, the man thought.

However, the first few minutes of the ride were quite smooth, aside from the occasional bumps and jolts that were common with these contraptions. But when, as predicted, they reached a curve in the track and the man wound up with a lapful of teenage boy and little else, he immediately tightened his grip around Jack in hopes of keeping him from going careening off the bench entirely.

They remained this way until the track resumed its path, but when it did, Aster became aware of how very still Jack was sitting on his legs, and there was a kind of rigidity about his shoulders that let the man know what he had to do next. Loosing his grip a little, he allowed the boy to tumble out of his arms, back onto the bench. Jack sat as far away from him as he could for the rest of the ride.

* * *

Things were silent between them for a bit after the incident on the train. Aster was acutely aware that he had made the boy uncomfortable, but he wasn't quite sure how to broach the subject. He supposed he should start with something simple, to make the kid feel comfortable again, but that would require sensitivity, and everyone who knew him would agree that that was a little lacking in his personality. He wished he had Tooth here with him. She always knew what to say, and she brimmed with things like that, things like sensitivity and decorum and delicacy – all the things Aster felt that he lacked. But never had he felt that absence so keenly within himself until today, until he thought wistfully of his friend, knowing she would have already put Jack completely at ease and gotten him talking again, gotten the light back in his eyes, made them sparkle.

But Aster was not Tooth.

So after a few more minutes of rather painful silence, he seized gratefully upon the nearest distraction. "Oh, hey, this is the booth I run," he pointed quickly, noticing immediately that they had a redheaded boy of about sixteen currently running the booth, as it was Aster's day off. When the man paused to look, he saw the boy hand off a stuffed powder-blue dragon to a blond girl about his age, obviously a winner of the bottle toss.

"Want to play a quick round, Frost—Jack?" He caught himself before the nickname could slip fully out, but he knew the boy had heard anyway.

"Sure," Jack responded, but he sounded wholly unenthusiastic.

Figuring this was better than nothing, Aster took the lead in their approach to the booth. Yet when he tried to hand Jack the rings, the boy in question just stared blankly back at him.

"I don't know how to play," Jack informed him. "I told you I'd never been to a carnival before."

_Oh, Frostbite. _Aster bit his lip to stop himself from actually saying the words. "Well, see, you hold the rings like this…"

* * *

"C'mon, why won't you let me play?" Jack folded his arms over his chest to display his obvious irritation. "It's not like I'm not strong enough! I mean, it's rubber!"

"A rubber mallet," Aster began, looking down at the overly enthusiastic, stick-thin teenage boy in front of him, "is still a mallet."

"Oh, wow." Jack unfolded his arms, one hand going swiftly up to cover his mouth in his apparent shock and horror as the other hand slipped down to clutch at his heart like he feared it might stop. "I had no idea that a rubber mallet was still a mallet. Wow, Aster, thank you so much, for informing me so kindly, because I have no idea where I'd be without—

"Cut the sarcasm, Frostbite," the man interrupted irritably. "And lose the shit-eating grin. You can play if you want to, but I'm warning you right now, you probably won't be able to lift it. These things are designed to be heavy."

"I can do it," Jack insisted.

Aster eyed the boy doubtfully. It wasn't just that he was practically a matchstick – it was that his hoodie hung so loosely on him that it stood out like a shag on a rock. And that his pale, small fists had no real strength to them. And that Aster had seen those other boys at his school pushing him around with relative ease, had seen Jack go down without a fight, had seen his back only a few hours afterward, the ugly purple bruise blooming over his pale skin, it was, it was…it was that he was weak.

Unfortunately, Jack noticed his gaze and must have correctly guessed the direction of his thoughts, because he started flexing one arm, trying to coax nonexistent muscle into being. "Look at this. Look at this! I can handle that mallet, no problem. And all will rue the day they challenged the fearsome warrior!" He puffed his chest out, tapping it proudly with his fist until a rather derisive snort from his companion had him peering around irritably. "If you have anything to add, the fearsome warrior shall cut you to pieces, with his trusty sword…" the boy paused for only a moment to think. "_Winterbreath_!"

"I shall draw my bloodstained blade…" Jack looked around for something suitable to use as a weapon and, finding nothing, made a lunge with an imaginary sword, "and chop all dissenters up to pieces!"

"If you can _lift _your bloodstained blade, that is," Aster reminded him. "Winterbreath." His smirk indicated exactly what he thought of the name, yet there was an annoyed twist to his mouth.

"Enough!" Jack declared – in a strong British accent. "Let us put an end to this drivel, and silence the doubters once and for all! I challenge you to a duel, a test of strength! The strength of body, mind and soul! So hand me a mallet, good sir, and I shall at last clear my name of the horrible, cruel words they spit in my direction when they think I cannot hear!"

Aster's features immediately formed a scowl. "No."

"Why not?" Jack lost the accent, mouth twisting into what could almost be described as a pout. "You're the one who's so determined to prove that I'm not strong enough to lift it!"

"That doesn't mean I want to lift it!" replied an extremely exasperated Aster.

"Are you frightened, good sir?" The accent returned with alarming swiftness. "Frightened that the fearsome warrior will outdo you in a battle of strength? You ought to be, good sir, you ought—

"Here's the question," Aster cut in, "will it make you quit talking like that?"

"I am not talking like anything, good sir. This beith my ordinary voice."

"_Stop_ it, mate," the man instructed crossly. "That's annoying as hell."

"I apologize for irritating the gentleman," Jack bowed deeply. "But the alter ego shall not disappear until one has conquered the other."

"Oh, for the love of…"

Jack grinned brightly, displaying his teeth. For a minute, Aster forgot their argument in the sudden realization that he had never seen Jack smile before – really smile, like this, in a genuine fashion. He had never seen the kid acting like this before, either, acting goofy just for the hell of it.

The man swallowed his protests. "Fine." He slammed some money down, and the lights on either side of the Ring the Bell stand lit up in an attempt to attract attention from passersby. It was always best to draw a crowd before beginning to play.

"Farewell, good sir." The boy bowed again. "Until next time, gentleman." He immediately straightened up again, reaching eagerly for the rubber mallet.

"This is heavy," Aster warned him.

Jack waved him off. "Fear not, good—I mean. Don't worry. I can handle it."

However, the instant it was within his grip, he immediately grabbed at it with both hands, stumbling backward as the hammer threatened to slip out of his grip completely and slide to the ground. The thought of Aster's I-knew-I-was-right smirk returning lent him strength, however, and he managed to balance himself to swing the mallet down upon the button.

The pointer barely moved.

* * *

"Are you hungry?"

"I could eat." Jack hadn't thought about it, but the last thing he'd eaten was a pancake drizzled in maple syrup – and even then, he'd only really taken a couple bites. But now that Aster mentioned it, he realized he was hungry, and all the delicious smells wafting from the food booths around them only reminded him of that.

"Are we eating here?" Come to think of it, he didn't think he'd ever even seen half the foods these people were selling.

Aster's expression twitched slightly, like he was fighting disgust. "If you want."

"What do you mean?" Jack questioned, suddenly suspicious. "Is the food here gross or something?"

"It's…well, it's…it's unhealthy," the man finally stuttered out the rather feeble response.

"And your food isn't?"

"The food I make is healthy," Aster insisted. "I can't help it that some people cover it in so much syrup that the pancakes look like they need a life preserver."

"Hey!"

"Do you want to grab something here or what?"

Jack shrugged noncommittally, because he couldn't say yes.

He couldn't ask the man for anything more, after everything Aster had done for him this past week. And he couldn't say yes when he balanced on a knife's edge. The slightest misstep would lead to the shattering, the whole world around him, and this whole day would end up being just a beautiful illusion, because that was the way it worked, the way it was _supposed _to work. He wasn't supposed to get nice things like this.

"I don't speak Shoulderese, kid," Aster said dryly. "Tell me with your lips, please."

"I'll grab something when we head back to your house." Although, to tell the truth, he wasn't sure if this was going to be their only stop of the day. "We're going back to your place after this, right?"

"…C'mon. I'll buy you something."

"Is that a no, then?"


	16. Chapter 16

_**Break of Dawn **_

**A/N: Hey, people. This is the new rewritten chapter for Break of Dawn. It's way better than the first version. Yet still, sorry for taking the first version down. And like in the first version, I just want to say, I probably will start updating once a month from now on. In the third week of the month, I think. Because my last chapter in August was in the third week, and then I skipped September, but November is Nano Wrimo and the start of the Christmas season and whatnot, and December is the holidays, so I imagine I'll be pretty busy over the next two months. So. I will see you all next month, I suppose? If not sooner. I hope I'll be sooner. **

* * *

"Aster. For God's sake. It's just food."

"Greasy food. _Fried_ food."

"It won't hurt you!"

"It's going to take my soul!"

"Oh, for Pete's sake…" Jack rolled his eyes but left the sentence unfinished, shoving in the last of his hot dog – unlike Aster, he had fallen on the food almost immediately after they had gotten it, and had eaten with indecent enthusiasm for the whole meal. "Look, if you don't eat it, _I'm_ going to."

"It's destroying your insides!"

"My body was destroyed long ago," the boy replied casually, though perhaps there was truth to his words, in more ways than the one he had implied. "C'mon. If you're not gonna eat it, pass it."

"I can't look," groaned Aster, shoving his own portion of the meal toward the white-haired teen. "Just take it. I can't even stand the smell anymore."

Jack chuckled.

* * *

They continued walking around the carnival for maybe an hour or more, the sky beginning to steadily darken around them. At the end of the aforementioned time period, he early birds had long since disappeared, and the usual latecomers to the Warren – mostly college-age couples – had not yet arrived.

"Well, I think we've seen everything worth seeing," Aster observed, allowing his gaze to sweep the carnival at large – and shuddering as he noticed a smiling woman handing an eager, grinning little girl a funnel cake. "So how about it, kiddo? Interested in getting out of here?" Silence. "Kiddo?" Aster turned slowly on the spot – and nearly groaned aloud.

Jack was standing over by the Ferris wheel.

And of course he would be. This was the first ride the kid had expressed any real amount of interest in when they had arrived. To tell the truth, the man had been surprised when Jack hadn't immediately asked to go on it; being a common staple of almost any carnival, and with the boy's limited experience in places such as these, Aster had been rather expecting to suffer through an ordeal.

When Jack hadn't asked, Aster had allowed himself to relax; but now, watching the child tilting his white-haired head back, as if to take in everything about the wheel, all at once, the man wondered if his own reluctance had stopped the boy.

Before he could probe this idea any further, he began to cut a path through the maze of tents and booths, eyes fixed irritably on the skinny, jacket-clad figure. Honestly, would it kill the kid to just stay with him? What made him feel the clearly irrepressible urge to run off whenever Aster looked away?

Aster was already mentally crafting a brilliant lecture in his mind, to deliver once he had reached the boy. On his way there, he made sure to give Luna a wide berth; just because he didn't believe in palmistry didn't mean he enjoyed her talking about short lifelines every time she looked at his hands.

Finally coming up behind the small figure, he clapped a hand on the boy's shoulder, opening his mouth to begin the scolding – but, whatever he'd been planning to say was rendered quite useless, as Jack jumped practically a mile in the air, spinning around to look at the man with blue eyes wide, immediately retreating slightly. Aster could see his pale hands shaking slightly from the sudden fear, and a feeling that the man was not accustomed to bubbled up within him. Tooth would have called it guilt.

"Sorry. Sorry. I just…you…you surprised me." It was the closest thing to an apology that Aster had ever heard leave the teenager's mouth, and for a minute, he quite forgot himself in the surprise. Raising his eyebrows slightly in surprise, he stayed silent.

The kid took several skittish, faltering steps forward, eyes darting fearfully from the ground to the man's face and back again.

"Nah, no need for apologies, kiddo," Aster forced himself to sound breezy and cheerful, waving a hand dismissively, "guess I shouldn't have crept up on you like that. Anyway, stay with me next time, alright?"

To tell the truth, Jack's reaction had driven the carefully crafted scolding from the man's mind completely; this was about all he could manage.

"Sorry," Jack said again; there was something about the new defiant squaring of his shoulders and set of his jaw that Aster recognized, but could not place.

"You didn't…" Aster glanced at the wheel again and then back at the boy in question. No, that was not defiance in the small body – that was defensiveness. That was a weak attempt at making himself look bigger or stronger or tougher than he really was, just in case he needed to be big or strong or tough. "You didn't want to go on it, did you?"

Jack blinked uncomprehendingly, and a bit of the fear seemed to leave him. "The what?"

"The ride, Frostbite."

"Oh." Jack's cheeks flushed slightly as he grasped the question; he turned his head to look at the Ferris wheel, as if honestly considering the offer, but when he looked at Aster again, there was something slightly wistful in his smile. "Nah."

Emerald eyes swept the boy's body again, taking him in, and it was then that Aster recognized Jack's stance, the fear in the very way he stood; when the child had first entered the man's house, there had been that same fear. The ways in which the boy moved and stood and spoke simply communicated, breathed, ached with, dripped with, that same wariness, that same fear. And it was then that Aster realized, ever since they had climbed into the car, the wariness had fallen away. There was nothing but pure enthusiasm and childish joy to take its place. How had he not noticed this before, this fearful, distrusting boy gazing back at him?

The happiness the carnival had fostered within Jack was only temporary; probably it would be gone by the time they came back to the house. Aster suddenly wanted, more than anything, to see another genuine smile decorate the boy's features tonight.

The smile slowly dropped from the child's pale face. "Aster? Aster? Are you okay?"

Jack would never understand, then, why the man turned suddenly to the Ferris wheel and said, "Let's go."

* * *

Jack did not even try to protest; he just mechanically followed Aster back to the ride, where the man working the ride smiled, holding out a hand for Aster to shake.

While the two men talked, and Aster paid for their tickets, Jack looked up at the structure looming high above them – it was the kind of sight that exhilarated and terrified, and for a minute, he was quite breathless with something not unlike terror.

Yet when the time came for them to climb into the compartment, there was no hesitation in his movements. He could hear the thuds of his sneakers against the compartment floor, but it sounded distant to him now, as he slowly took a seat. He barely glanced at Aster when the man went in after him – he was looking out the window, then looking away, then looking out again, each time wondering…wondering if they'd…

The compartment door shut, and the ride creaked and groaned, beginning to…beginning to _move_.

Jack felt his heart jump into his throat. They were rising. They were moving! They were rising in the air, slowly, yes, very slowly, but rising still, and it was wonderful, it was amazing…when he looked out the window again, he could see the ground falling sharply away, beginning their ascent into the darkened sky.

Jack became aware that his heart was beating very hard – so hard, it was almost painful. Really, he should have protested against this – he didn't know why he hadn't, come to think of it. He shouldn't be here. Shouldn't. He shouldn't be here, with the compartment rising and leaving the ground behind…they were leaving the ground behind, and Jack could hardly believe it. He really shouldn't have done this. _Only good boys get to leave the ground, Jack. Only good boys…and you have been a very bad boy._

Unconsciously, the boy shuddered, looking out the window again in hopes of distracting himself. The ground was so far…they were so high up…his heart, if it was possible, picked up speed. They must be almost to the top of the ride…almost to the top…his hands, damp from sweat, fisted around his jeans. He ought to look away. He ought to look away until they reached the top. It'd be better that way. Easier. Then he'd never have to look…he shouldn't look. He had no right to look.

Yet he kept his eyes wide open; he hardly dared blink. He drew several deep breaths, forcing himself to stay in his seat, for if he bolted now, he'd have nowhere to run. He had to stay seated. He had to…he couldn't run…he couldn't…he would scare Aster if he did that…but Aster was only a distant thought now, far away from him, far as the ground, because they were no longer touching the ground, they were far from it, they were gone…

Almost…almost…maybe he should close his eyes…yes, he really should…

And then they were at the pinnacle.

And it was too beautiful, more beautiful than he had ever imagined, and he suddenly leaned out the window, staring down at the carnival below them, the ground below them, everything just a distant blanket, and nothing mattered but that he kept looking…if he tore his eyes away, if he even stopped to blink, he would be too afraid to do so again, and he wanted to remember every second of this.

Nothing else mattered but that they were up here, and that they weren't going down yet, and that he was looking at it, seeing it. Up close, the clouds looked thinner and vaporous, yet seemed to be growing heavier and darker the longer he looked at them. The sky was pale orange from the sunset, and the spring breeze whistled around them, swirling around the ride as a whole, and the compartment floor was shuddering and shaking beneath his feet and they were here, really here…

And then…then it was over.

The moment had occurred, and then it was gone. But it had happened. And that was good enough.


	17. Chapter 17

_**Break of Dawn **_

**A/N: Okay, so I updated this a little early - I mean, technically, it is the third week, so I would have had to sooner or later, but Thanksgiving is next week. So I had to get my ass in gear and update this. Also, I'm just recovering from a sickness, so I feel alive again for the first time in days xD it was bad, seriously :P I ran a pretty high fever for most of it, and I basically lay around looking pale and deathly for the weekend xD **

**Furthermore, I'm NOT going to be one of those people who say, "I won't update until I get reviews!" because honestly, like what? But reviews do inspire me, and I love hearing from you guys - whether you talk about the chapter or not, a review is always appreciated in my book, and they do convince me to write more, because if I see a story with reviews, it encourages me more than a story with 0 reviews - it makes me feel like the story is liked by other people, and they'll be glad if I post. So, seriously, please drop some reviews. **

* * *

Jack did not own many earthly possessions; save for the blue hoodie on his thin body and the rusting razor in the pocket, he owned next to nothing of sentimental value, and nothing at all of monetary worth. When he had found himself in foster care, this had not changed; there never seemed to be enough to go around there, whether it be clothes or books or merely space; when Ms. Bennett had decided to take him in…that was the first time he could honestly remember anyone holding something out to him, telling it was for him. Granted, that "something" had been a pair of shoes he hardly ever wore (he didn't like sneakers) and he still didn't consider them his until he paid Ms. Bennett off in some way…but still.

So he had learned how to content himself early on with things much more precious than tangible, worldly items; he sought memories instead, tucked them as close to his heart as his blade, because those memories were everythingto him, just like his razor. Those numerous nights in the horrible gray room, he had lain awake, shuddering when the cold winds sought entry through the holes in his ragged coverings; even if he somehow managed to find some semblance of comfort, he still could not sleep, for fear kept him awake, and when he dared close his eyes, only to be confronted with the face of the man with the velvet voice, panic would consume him, jolting him, and he knew he would be getting no rest.

Every time his future had never looked darker, Jack would pull out these memories, relive them, in a sense, draw comfort from them…and they would make everything seem just a bit brighter.

Yet he had never made a memory worth reliving without his sister by his side – that was the one thing that all of his best recollections had in common, was that they involved her in some way. This was the first memory – the sky turning a million different hues around them, the floor shaking beneath their feet, the ground, so impossibly far away – this was the first memory he had made without his sister by his side that he would hold close to his heart.

For a brief minute, a wave of guilt seized him – _you have no right to be having fun like this without her here, you don't deserve it, it should have been you, you're such a useless little freak, you have no right _– before a noise startled him out of his thoughts. Kind of a weird noise – sort of like a moan, but not the ones Jack had heard all his life; this was different, it sounded low and…almost afraid…maybe it had something to do with the ride? Maybe the ride was creaking? Possibly, and if so, Aster had heard the sound before.

The boy turned to the other occupant of the compartment. "Hey, Aster, did you hear—?" He stopped short upon seeing the state the man was in – his lips were pressed tightly together, like he was struggling not to make a sound, and his fair skin had a slightly green tinge, like he might be sick, and his hands were clenched into fists around the edge of the red plastic bench, like he was struggling to stay seated, trying to ground himself.

Jack frowned. "Aster? Are you okay?" He stood from his own bench, kneeling in front of Aster's, brow furrowing in confusion. Looking at him, he began to think that it was in fact the man in front of him who had produced that odd noise. "Aster?" The blond man appeared not to hear him – he had his eyes tightly shut, and a sheen of sweat glistened on his forehead. "Aster?"

"I'm okay." The response was gruff and brisk, dismissive. "I'm fine."

"Which is exactly why you look like you're about to throw up," the teen said sarcastically. "Seriously, what's wrong?" He inspected the man worriedly. "Are you in pain?"

"_No."_ This time, his voice was sharper. "I'm fine. Go away."

"You know, I _do_ have eyes," Jack countered, remaining exactly where he was. "So any lying is pointless right now." The compartment shuddered.

"Are we at the top?" The man spoke through gritted teeth, clearly reluctant to look for himself.

"We already reached the top," Jack told him. "We're going down again." He frowned, a sudden suspicion taking shape in his mind. "Are you afraid of heights?"

"If we were supposed to be in the sky, we'd be born with wings," Aster replied snappishly, but the tensing in his shoulders let the boy know his guess was correct.

It was hard for Jack to swallow around the hard knot of guilt in his throat. "I'm sorry, I didn't know, I would never have agreed to come on this—

"It's my own fault, isn't it?" Aster replied. "I had the idea to go up in this thing anyway, didn't I?" He bit his lip. "You were being honest when you said we were going down again?"

Jack disregarded the last question, brows knitting in profound confusion. "Why'd we go on this ride, then?"

"You wanted to," Aster didn't open his eyes when he talked. "I could tell. And it was your first time at a carnival, so…"

"Really?" Jack could not remember the last time anyone had done this, put something important to him in front of their own desires and needs or phobias…Was that really what Aster had done? "I mean…" The idea was nice, so nice…it made a strange feeling stir within him. "Really?"

"How close are we to the ground now?" The man murmured, still with his eyes shut.

"Almost there." Jack turned away from him to glance out the window. "Alright, hang on, there's a couple in front of us – and…you can open your eyes now."

Aster slowly and hesitantly opened his eyes, relaxing visibly when he saw that Jack spoke the truth. "Thanks, mate." He wouldn't meet the boy's gaze, and the instant that the compartment jerked to a stop, he dashed out, striding away so fast Jack had to run to catch up.

When he finally drew even with the man, they walked in silence to the car for a long minute before Jack spoke. "Karma."

"What?"

"That little incident back there on the Ferris wheel?" Jack grinned. "Or do the words 'walkthrough' or 'clown' not ring any bells with you?"

Aster was spared from replying by the sudden vibrating of his phone in his pocket – when he pulled it out, Jack asked in surprise, "You have a phone?"

"No, I just happened to pull a magical buzzing device out of my jeans," the man responded sarcastically. "Kind of unnecessary for me, though, seeing as I only have Regina and the others in…my…" he pressed a button, and Jack watched his green eyes flick over the message, widen comically, and then he said aloud, "Oh, shit."

"What? What's wrong?" Jack tugged on the man's sleeve, trying to get his attention – he_ hated_ walking beside Aster, it made him feel so _short_.

"Listen, kiddo," Aster looked down at the message again, the frown growing bigger. "I forgot about this, but earlier in the week, before Ms. Bennett got called away on her trip and asked me to take care of you, this buddy of mine wanted me to grab a bite with him and the others. I was busy the night he asked, so we rescheduled, and…well, do you mind? I forgot about it until now, but—

"Nah, it's fine." Jack waved a hand. He couldn't possibly be disappointed, because today had been so fun. "I have a ton of homework, anyway, so I'll be fine." Blatant lie. He had finished the majority of it on Saturday, but he didn't want Aster to think he'd be bored or lonely.

The man blinked at him, uncomprehending. "Then maybe we shouldn't."

"We?"

"If you have all the homework that you say you do—

"What are you talking about?"

"Well, I don't want to be the reason you fail out of high school."

"Trust me, you won't be." Jack rolled his eyes; he had already accepted the simple fact that he was most likely going to be retaking junior year. "But seriously, what are you talking about? I'll have plenty of time to finish up while you guys have dinner."

"What?"

"What?"

"Kid, I meant…oh, kid, I didn't mean do you care if I leave you at the house," Aster's voice was very soft. "I meant do you mind if I take you there."

"What?" Jack repeated. Aster actually wanted him to meet his friend? He certainly wasn't planning on hiding him away because he was an embarrassment, it seemed… "I mean…really? I—I…yes. No. I don't. Mind. I mean, I'd like to meet your friend, but if you'd rather just leave me behind, I would, I'd understand—

"C'mon, Frostbite," Aster's tone was one of forced lightness, but Jack found himself forgetting that when the man's large, tanned hand ruffled his messy silvery hair. Absurdly, he liked the touch, and maybe even added it to his cherished memories.


	18. Chapter 18

**_Break of Dawn _**

**A/N: OH MY GOSH I AM SO SORRY WHY DID I LET THE TIME GET AWAY FROM ME LIKE THAT AUGHHHH I AM SORRY I KNOW I PROMISED MONTHLY UPDATES AND WHY ISN'T THAT AN EASY PROMISE TO KEEP BUT UGHH DECEMBER JUST FRICKIN CREPT UP ON ME LIKE A SNEAKY BITCH LIKE WHAT THE FRICK DECEMBER WHY DID YOU DO THAT WHY DIDN'T YOU SLOW DOWN FOR TWO SECONDS TO LET ME UPDATE THIS FIC UGHHHH THE HOLIDAYS JUST GOT CRAZY AND 2015 ENDED IN A BLINK AND BEFORE I KNEW IT, IT WAS 2016 I AM SORRY I AM A SHITFACE **

**I am seriously so sorry, guys D: I feel terrible. The only consolation I can offer is perhaps two updates in January, now. But the holidays were unexpectedly busy this year, so there's that. And I baked like ten kinds of Christmas cookies, so all fear me and my baking skills. If Tooth had seen me, she would have flipped out about the sugar I had xD **

**AND OH MY GOSH GUYS 250 REVIEWS LIKE WHAT I JUST ASKED FOR A FEW LAST CHAPTER AND I FRICKIN BLINKED AND I HAD NINETEEN OH MY GOSH YOU GUYS ARE SO NICE AHHHH THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU *hugs you guys like a million times each* **

**Okay, so important notes for my portrayal of the Guardians, we have... Well, first things first, I wanted to show North as this like, ridiculously wealthy, content bachelor guy who's always sort of looked out for Aster, and sort of sees Aster like a son. And since North is shown to have an extremely protective and fatherly side in canon, I figured that'd work. I also imagine his hair went gray prematurely, so he's a bit younger than Jack thinks - he's probably closing in on the sixties. **

**Tooth is this flighty, spacey dentist who's always wanted to start a family and whatnot and she's just never found the time or the right man and she's had a shitty life, but she's still very happy and caring like in canon. I imagine her to be about early thirties. **

**And Sandy has just been through the fire, so him being unable to talk on top of everything else is kind of the icing on the cake. So, there. Have my head canons of modern human Guardians. I hope you enjoy, and please review! **

* * *

Sometimes, it seemed to Jack that he had never seen the sun.

He knew the notion was ridiculous; he'd seen the sun before, falling in shafts and patches on stained and dusty carpet; pale rays stealing through into the bedroom, sneaking undetected through cracked or shattered glass panes. He'd seen the glowing illumination people called sunlight; seen day break over the horizon, seen the glowing orb rising into a steadily lightening sky. He'd tracked it with his sleepless eyes; watched it glitter and gleam high above him, impossibly far away in the clear blue sky.

Yet he could not shake the feeling of shadows swallowing him; falling down a deep well, farther and farther; being locked in a dark bedroom; left to drown in his own terror; sentenced to the curse of eternal night, to bear the burden of silent sin.

And sixteen years, he reflected quietly, was a long time to live in darkness.

An annoyed grunt from the man at his side had him looking up, and he noticed for the first time how gray the sky had gotten; how the sun seemed to have disappeared behind the rapidly darkening clouds, spreading over the sky like a bruise. Rain was beginning to fall in a steady but light drizzle, but judging by those dark clouds, something more intense was looming on the horizon.

"C'mon, Frostbite," Aster seemed to have read the boy's mind, for next second, a large, tanned hand had grabbed at his hoodie sleeve, tugging him along. For the life of him, Jack couldn't – or wouldn't – say exactly why a smile crept up the corners of his lips at the unexpected return of the nickname. "I bet you anything it'll pick up in a minute and we don't want to be here when it does."

The man quickened his pace, so Jack did, too, determined to keep up with Aster's long, light strides; a brutal wind beat against their backs, urging them onward, thoughts of suns and shadows all forgotten. By the time they reached the carnival exit, the man was flat-out running, and Jack soon found himself falling behind, despite his attempts to stay at Aster's side.

Another twenty seconds and they had both reached their respective sides of the vehicle; the moment the boy reached long, pale fingers for the passenger door handle, fumbling a bit due to the chill eating at his palms, the clouds burst, the sky opened, and the rain fell in earnest, soaking everything within the lot, including them. The boy shivered a little, unexpectedly cold even with the protection of his customary blue hoodie and torn jeans. He turned to once again grasp for the handle, but the sight of the disgruntled man on the other side of the car, an expression of distaste on his tanned face, beneath his dripping blond hair, suddenly distracted him from this mission, making him laugh – probably harder than the situation warranted. He put a hand over his mouth, trying to stop, but it wasn't easy, especially after the man crossed his arms impatiently and muttered something that sounded suspiciously like "effing crazy kids" and "goddamn weather" under his breath.

The sound issuing from his mouth wasn't really one of mirth anymore, anyway; but of pleasure, delight, wonder. Everything leading up to this moment had been completely crazy and unexpected and fun, and…and it gave him a strange feeling in his chest, one he couldn't place. One he could never remember feeling before.

Who would have ever guessed he'd be standing here at the end of one of the best days of his life, laughing despite the heavens raining down on him, even as thunder rumbled and lightning flashed? Even as the steady drizzle became a violent downpour, and Aster grumbled and watched him as if to ask if he was through yet, he stood mere inches away from the warm, dry interior of the car, he laughed. Because even though the sky was gray, he could swear he could feel the sun on his face.

* * *

"The_ penthouse_?" Jack was fairly sure his voice was squeaking as the orange elevator buttons glowed, but he couldn't help it; as far as he could remember, Ms. Bennett's house was the best place he'd ever been in; no rats or insects unexpectedly creeping onto your mattress as if to settle down with you, no paint peeling away from walls, no broken windows, no unshakable chill seeping into every part of the house…well, suffice to say, it was much nicer than anywhere he'd ever lived before. But a _penthouse_...now that was another story.

Aster chuckled. "Yeah, North likes his space."

The teen snorted. "Apparently."

The elevator dinged quietly, and the metal doors slid open, revealing a truly gigantic sitting room; one wall was composed entirely of a window, looking out over the sprawling city of Burgess. The other walls were plain and undecorated, though a black clock ticked loudly above a comfy-looking white sofa.

"Whoa," Jack waited until Aster had stepped out to do the same, looking about himself in awe. "This is…I can't believe your friend lives here."

"You sound so surprised," Aster remarked. "Were you expecting a moldy cardboard box under a collapsed bridge, or something?"

The boy's cheeks darkened. "No…it's just…this is…really…big."

"Spoken like a truly well-educated high-school junior," the man retorted. "Indeed, the penthouse is big."

Jack threw him a glare. "You know what I mean. Is North…married or anything? I mean, does he have a family, maybe?"

"I am afraid not." The voice that spoke was not Aster's, and the boy jumped about a mile in the air, spinning around to locate the speaker; another, older man stood behind him, so aged that his hair and long, kempt beard had turned white, but the sparkle in his sapphire blue eyes gave him an air of youth. He wore a scarlet coat so long that the hem dangled just above his polished black boots, gleaming in the fluorescent light from the ceiling. When Jack met his eyes, the man smiled at him, extending a huge hand. "You must be Jack, _da_?" he questioned, shaking the boy's hand so enthusiastically Jack was sure his shoulder was now dislocated.

"Y-yeah," he stuttered, slightly uncomfortable due to the man's size and closeness. "I…um…hi? Are you North?"

"_Da_," the man repeated, smiling. "North, or Nick, or Nicholas. Perhaps Mr. North. Whatever you wish to call me."

"O-okay." Jack nodded, immediately fishing for something more substantial to say, but North took the problem off his hands; releasing him from the violent handshake, the older man turned his attention instead to Aster. He actually seized the twenty-year-old in a hug, booming happily as he did so, "Is good to see you again, my friend! It has been too long!" He let the blond man out of the embrace shortly after, allowing Aster to regain his breath.

"Same to ya, North," he responded casually; Jack could only stare, the image of the hug still locked in his mind. Was that ordinary protocol between them? Aster acted like it was natural, but just the idea of anyone hugging the grumpy man was laughable; but then the thought that he had, in fact, embraced Aster, and indeed clung to him as though his life depended on it, just a few hours ago, had him sobering instantly.

"Tooth and Sandy already here?" Aster inquired, peering around the sitting room as though expecting them to pop out at any second.

"In kitchen," North responded promptly. "Helping prepare dinner."

"Need an extra set of hands? Make that two sets, actually," he added, gesturing to Jack.

The idea of offering assistance hadn't even crossed the boy's mind, but now it occurred to him that it should have; he trailed the two men deeper into the apartment. As they drew closer, he could hear the sound of pots and pans clanging against each other, and a female voice chattering incessantly.

"Ooh, I think the sauce is bubbling! That means we can add the—no, we shouldn't—okay, well, if you think…alright, fine—so…" the next words were lost among a renewed clanging from the pots and pans and when Jack turned a corner, it was to the sight of two people, both attempting to juggle several dishes at once, while also eyeballing a cookbook.

"It says that once the sauce begins to bubble—where did North get off to?" Jack recognized the voice as that of the speaker's, and when she turned, attempting to balance a truly gigantic stack of pots and pans, he drew a sharp breath. She was young, not much older than Aster, and extremely beautiful; bushy black hair fell in waves around her face, and she had dyed the front part in what seemed to be a bit of every color in the spectrum, because Jack counted at least five colors before she spotted them.

Dropping the pots and pans on the counter with a delighted sound, the woman bounded forward, grabbing Aster by the shoulders and pulling him into a tight hug. "Aster! It's great to see you, honey!"

The white-haired teen had to look away, biting his lip to stifle a chuckle. _Honey?_ Since when Aster ever allowed anyone on the green earth to call him that?

"I missed you, too, Sheila," the blond man chuckled, patting her on the arm. "But you're killing me here, I can barely breathe."

The woman released him, and stood for a second drinking him in; then her eyes alighted on Jack, and the boy found himself trying to subtly escape the threat of an embrace.

"You must be Jack! Aster said something about you, but I didn't think—well—hi! I'm Tooth!" The woman chirped; luckily, she didn't attempt to hug him, merely extended a slender hand for his. "I'm so pleased to meet you!"

"Um…same," Jack stuttered, giving her a small, slightly nervous smile.

For no apparent reason, this made the woman give a delighted squeal. "Oh, my gosh, your teeth are so white! Oh, and they're so straight, they're so even—how did you get them like that? Do you get whitening treatments? Have you had braces?"

"My…my what?" the boy repeated, slightly dazed, his head spinning from her speedy chatter.

"Your teeth!" the woman said again, by way of explanation. "They're beautiful!"

"Aw, c'mon, Tooth, don't start with that hygienist stuff now," Aster interrupted them, coming around to place a hand on Jack's shoulder. "Let the kid breathe, at least."

"Y-you're a hygienist?"

"Dentist, actually," the woman replied dismissively, "that's why he calls me Tooth." She jerked her head in Aster's direction before abruptly remembering her previous delight, and returning to it. "So, how did you get your teeth like this? You must have known really great dentists when you were little!"

"Uh…no." Jack wrinkled his brow, attempting to recall _any_ memory involving people working on his teeth, but nothing came to mind. "No dentists. I don't think any braces or whitening, either – my teeth have always just been like this."

Tooth's brow wrinkled, showing her confusion.

"I guess I just take good care of them," the boy added, shrugging, slightly uncomfortable but also a bit pleased with the sudden attention – even if it was because of his teeth. "I mean, I figure if they've got to last me awhile, I'd better take good care of them."

"Careful, mate," Aster warned, amusement in his voice. "You keep talking like that, and Tooth might want to marry you."

Jack laughed; when his mouth opened, the woman let out another small sound of happiness.

"Sorry," she apologized, when the boy looked round at her. "They're just…they're gorgeous. I bet people are always complimenting your smile."

"Uh, you'd be the first," the teen admitted with a shrug, but he sent her another small smile anyway.

Another pile of ceramic dishes clattered suddenly onto one of the polished countertops, and Jack became aware of a very small man dusting his hands off happily; he had a shock of bright gold hair standing up in every possible direction, and when he turned to face them, his deft fingers moved so quickly that Jack wasn't sure what had happened until Tooth laughed.

"Listen, Sandy, just because you won't let me…"

"That's Sandy?" Jack murmured, tuning Tooth out and looking to Aster for confirmation.

The man nodded.

"Is he…can he…can he talk?" the boy added, dropping his voice to that of a whisper.

"No." Aster shook his head, and there was something weary and sorrowful about him when he spoke the words. Catching the boy's expression, he added hastily, "Oh, it doesn't make a difference to us. We actually started learning sign language for him – I took a class four years ago."

"Wow." Jack wasn't sure whether it was the thought of having a friend that would do the same for him; the idea that Aster and the others gathered in this kitchen had all managed to learn it and used it flawlessly; or just the morbid curiosity of what it must be like, not even being able to speak. What did it feel like when you told your tongue to move, your throat to vibrate, your lips to form the words, and then it _didn't_? "Is he…you know…okay?"

"Yeah." Aster nodded, and when Jack looked up, he saw the man gazing across the kitchen at the shorter man, still using quick fingers to converse with Tooth and North. "I think he's just fine."


	19. Chapter 19

_**Break of Dawn **_

**A/N: I'MMMMMM NOT A PIECEEEE OF CAKEEEEEEE FOR YOU TO JUST DISCARDDDDDDD **

**Okay, sorry. Sorry. Melanie Martinez rocks. :) And currently, her "Cake" is playing in my ears. So you guys got that xD an impromptu concert, if you will. So, I AM sorry that I didn't update in February, truly, but um, it was a busy month. I rewatched Treasure Planet again last month and for some reason, it seemed 10x sadder and more beautiful than it ordinarily is. It's a great film at any time, but there are times when I need Jim and times when I need Hiccup and times when I need Jack and whatnot so...basically, I focus on the fictional character who's helping me at the time. So. Sorry not sorry.**

**Secondly, this is the chapter in which we see how...I don't know xD I want to say we see a new side of Jack in this chapter, but I don't really know how to describe it. I guess...desperate? For acceptance? I don't know. Because I mean Jack is lonely and does want people to like him, but he's not the kind of person who will change himself so people will like him, either, he's just like well fuck it they don't like me so I don't like them forget it, you know? At least, I feel that's how he is. And this chapter also somehow manages to make Jack and Aster have a moment over an onion xD like. YES. I ship Jack and Aster as brothers so harddd.**

**Also, guys, I got an account on Archive of Our Own! On there, I am CaffeineAndAnxiety, but I've only got one HTTYD one-shot up so far, but if you prefer that site to this one, I'm gonna be posting my in-progress fics there shortly, including this one. So. :)**

**And today's just been a good day. A really good day. I think things are finally falling into place for me, guys. I have a lot of hope. :)**

* * *

Upon meeting him, one could say Jack was proud – but this wasn't exactly true.

Really, he was not proud so much as he was independent; for as long as he could remember, he had been alone, and nobody had ever displayed a willingness to help him, assist him, extend a hand, ease a workload, offer a kindness, nobody had ever tried to comfort him…

No, that had always been his role. Even when the pieces of himself lay scattered on the floor, and he was left alone, he rose to his feet and put himself back together again. The shards he handled were jagged and sharp, but even when he cut his hands, when blood welled up and trickled down over his palms, he clenched his hands into fists to hide the injury and he never cried; he kept a smile on his face always, big and bright as he could manage, cloaking himself and his emotions flawlessly – nobody must ever see the mess he had become.

Others could cry; on this subject, he had no qualms. It had always been his role to care for those who cried, to shush the little ones, to be sure they did not rouse the horrible creatures called adults, to smooth their hair and whisper sweet things in their ears, to be certain that their cries were met with comfort, their tears with gentle hands, their sobs with warm embraces, when his never had been.

He'd looked after the children, cared about them as if they were his own siblings; he hugged them, held them tightly, reassured them and scolded them, prevented fights and tears whenever he could; he protected them, cradling them close to him, loving them fiercely with every beat of his heart…

And then, one day, they were gone.

Everyone, all the other children, names he could still remember, names that would not leave him alone, bouncing around inside his skull as if they had been tattooed on his brain, names that made his heart seize and shatter within his chest, all those other children he had not been able to save, and _her_…

He had tried his hardest, given it his all; how many times had he grit his teeth, ignored the pain, and kept going regardless? How many times had he smiled at the kids, pushed back his tears and forced himself to laugh instead, making up games off the top of his head just so they wouldn't cry anymore, just so their tears would stop? How many times had he tried desperately to ease their suffering, ease their pain, painted a smile on his face even when tears were building in his eyes? How many times had he stretched broken, bloody lips into a mangled mockery of a grin, trying his hardest to be okay because they were not?

He'd tried his hardest to comfort them, keep them safe, keep them happy, keep himself together even when others tried to shatter him, and in the end, it hadn't mattered. Everything had been lost. Everything he'd held dear, everything he'd cared about, everything that had mattered to him, suddenly, it was gone. And he was left alone in a new and alien world, silly smile still fixed in place because pretending was all he knew how to do, even when he'd lost everything, everyone, lost her…it hadn't mattered. He had tried his hardest, and he'd still failed. He'd promised them he'd keep them safe, protect them, and he hadn't. He had failed them.

He hadn't cried when he realized; even when he lost her, he hadn't cried, just sat still and silent for an immeasurable number of weeks, but he would swear he died that day. Jackson Overland fell to the ground lifeless, and from the shattered shards of his soul, Jack Frost emerged, a boy as hard and cold as his name.

Jackson Overland had loved the whole world, even when it hadn't loved him; Jack Frost would never love anyone again.

No, Jack Frost would be independent; he would never love or lean on anyone, never depend on them, never cry where others could see or bleed where they might notice, never ask for the comfort he had never received; he'd never ask for help, never allow his happiness to rely on someone else, never smile at them or get attached to them or ask or whisper or play or laugh or cry or _feel_; he would never love anyone, not ever again.

And nobody – he knew this with certainty, had known it for a very long time – nobody would ever love him.

And if ever he did need another, their comfort or embrace or even merely their assistance, he knew he would repay it ten times over; Jackson Overland had happily offered a smile everywhere he went, accepted help when another child offered it to him, had tried to play and enjoy life despite everything, but Jack Frost was not a charity case. He would never ask for anything – he could make it on his own, he could comfort himself and dry his own tears, put his own broken pieces back together, rely and depend on only himself, need only himself, wrap his arms around himself in a poor imitation of the hugs he had never received, he could take care of himself.

This determination was so deeply entrenched within him that even when Aster offered North two sets of extra hands, even though the only dishes he knew how to make were frozen dinners, he swallowed the words and smiled. Even when North led him to the cutting board and left him with a long, extremely sharp knife in one hand and the onion lying innocently upon the wood before him, he didn't say a word. It didn't matter that he'd never cut an onion – or anything – in his life.

Nope. He was good at this. In fact, he considered himself an expert in the art of not only independence, but also making shit up.

So, readjusting his grip on the handle, the teenager turned the knife so the tip faced straight down – and stabbed it through the heart of the onion, shining silver piercing the firm, white outer layer. After a minute of thorough hacking, it occurred to him in a kind of vague, distant way that he probably should have peeled it first, but it was too late now – if he tried to stop, he was afraid he wouldn't be able to get the knife back in, so he just kept going.

"Mate?"

"H-huh?" Jack tore his gaze from the stubborn vegetable, startled out of his thoughts; lifting his eyes, he met Aster's emerald gaze. "Sorry, what—what'd you say?"

"I just need the salt." Aster jerked his head in the direction of the cupboard over the cutting board, and Jack obediently stepped back, placing the onion, with the knife still stuck up inside it, onto the wood and allowing the man to take his place.

"Damn North…" Aster muttered under his breath. "…always does the most complicated…I should just give him the pepper, see if he even notices…here it is!" With a more triumphant air than Jack felt the task really merited, the man withdrew himself from the cupboard again, setting the salt shaker down by the cutting board. "Okay, sorry about that, I—what are you doing, Frostbite?" The man interrupted himself, suddenly glancing down and spotting the poor onion.

"Cutting onions," Jack responded, a little snappishly.

"Correction, you're _mutilating_ onions," Aster said, and easily extracted the knife from the heart of the vegetable; once he'd achieved this, he took a moment to wring his hand, as if holding the blade had pained him. "You really had that stuck, kiddo."

"Sorry." Jack approached the board again, picked up the knife and brought it down toward the center of the onion again – but Aster's hand came out of nowhere, stilling his.

"What are you doing, kid? You're supposed to cut the stem first!"

"Sorry! Sorry. I…I…forgot." Drawing in a breath, the boy angled the blade away from the onion again, blue eyes scanning the vegetable. What exactly _was_ the stem? Oh, well. In his experience, the stem was either the top or bottom, so he had a fifty-fifty chance of being right. Bringing the knife down to the bottom, he stuck the blade in and began to saw through.

"Kid!" Aster stepped forward and took the onion from his hands. "You're cutting the root!"

"Oh." Jack flushed, dropping his eyes to the silver blade in his hands. "Right."

Aster raised his eyebrows. "Haven't…haven't you ever done this before?"

Jack scoffed. "O-of course I have. I mean, you have to be some kind of idiot to be_ sixteen _and not know how to cut an _onion_." The flush in his neck rose to his cheeks as he spoke; _such an idiot, so stupid, how can you not know how to do this, you're sixteen goddamn years old. _

"Alright." Aster gave a sigh of what seemed to be resignation before taking the knife from the boy and gesturing with the tip of the blade to the top of the onion. "_This_ is the stem. You're supposed to cut this first, then cut it in half."

"Right." Jack nodded, eyes glued to the cutting board. He couldn't meet the man's gaze.

"Frostbite." The man's voice was unexpectedly gentle. "Come here and cut the stem."

"I…I can do it without supervision," the boy tried to defend himself, but Aster was unfazed.

"Humor me."

Jack threw a quick glance around himself, scanning the kitchen; everyone else appeared occupied with their own tasks – Tooth and Sandy were standing near the stove, prodding at something that sizzled and hissed, and North was tearing open a sealed package of what looked to be mushrooms. Satisfied that they were sufficiently distracted, the boy nodded, approaching Aster, carefully taking the knife offered to him and bringing it to the top of the onion.

"Don't—don't stab it in there," the man cautioned; the way Jack handled the blade appeared to be unnerving him. "Don't use the end of the knife, use the side."

"Right." Biting his lip, the boy followed Aster's orders as best he could, bringing the blade through the stem of the mutilated vegetable; when the top surrendered and hit the wood with a muffled thump, Jack immediately discarded the knife, reaching for the tough, flaky peeling.

"Wait," Aster forestalled him, putting a hand on his shoulder to give him pause. "You're going to want to cut it in half first – it's easier."

"Right. Okay." Jack nodded, grabbing up the knife again and, remembering what the man had told him only a few minutes previously, made sure to use the side of the blade this time, forcing it into the heart of the vegetable once again. This fresh attempt on the onion proved successful, and the two halves landed on either side of the board, each awaiting further sentence. "Now I peel them?" He meant to declare it, but somehow, it came out sounding like a question.

"Yep, now you can." Aster offered him a small smile. "After that, all you got to do is finish cutting, but keep switching – next time, you'll cut horizontally, then vertically, and back and forth until it's in pieces."

"Aster, where's the salt?" Tooth called suddenly from her spot by the stove. "I thought you were on seasoning duty!"

"Sorry 'bout that, Sheila," Aster grabbed the shaker from beside the cutting board, handing it to the dark-haired woman before turning back to face the boy. "You got the hang of things?"

"Yeah." Jack focused his attention on the board again, certain his face was turning red. "S-sorry." He'd almost screwed up the dinner and he'd wasted Aster's time, all because he was too stupid to cut _onions_. So much for making shit up.

"No problem." Aster smiled, giving the boy's thin shoulder a small squeeze. "You're doing good, kiddo."

Jack's hands stilled on the knife; glancing down at the board again, he replayed the words in his head.

_You're doing good. _

Three words. Probably meant sarcastically, probably a joke, meant only to tease, intended as banter, but either way, the boy found he couldn't help but smile.

_You're doing good._

It was the first time he could remember anybody saying anything of the sort, and when he thought it over again, he knew Aster probably hadn't meant it sincerely at all…but even so, he couldn't let them go.

He was doing _good_.


	20. Chapter 20

_**Break of Dawn**_

**A/N: ATTENTION  
**

**PLEASE READ**

**So. You guys are beautiful. I mean, you guys are _really_ beautiful. Seriously, I still can't really believe that there are actual people on this green earth who read this train wreck, and who stick with it and who leave kind reviews and don't flame even when they COULD. You guys just blow me away. Andddd you're figuring by now that there's a reason I'm saying all this shit, isn't there. Well...yes. But just bear with me, it's not as bad as you might think. It's just that I might be off the map for the rest of the year, at least where this site is concerned. I'm putting out a book this year, and hoping it'll hit the shelf late this month, but the thing is, I do have to step up to the plate and handle a lot of stuff, so I'll be juggling all of that AND several other projects that are important to me, and not to mention the novels I've been working on. It's just that my fanfiction is going to fall by the wayside for a bit - and I promise, I WILL be back sometime, and I will finish all my stories and I'll reply to PMs and everything just the same, it's just that I need to focus on my original work for now. But I WILL be back, and I WILL finish this story. I have to, really; there's too much angst in store for me to walk away now.**

**Okay. Now that I've finished up with that - GUYS IT'S SEPTEMBER CAN YOU FEEL IT, IT IS FALL AND SOON IT WILL BE WINTER MY SEASON IS COMING MY SEASON IS COMINGGGGGG I AM SO READY :DDDDDD I'm just sitting here getting childishly excited staring out the window because it's raining and the sky is gray and it's a cold rain and it's fallllll. And I'm listening to Maps by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs while I type this. Highly recommend this song. **

* * *

Pain was really nothing new.

As a matter of fact, over the course of his sixteen years Jack had come to accept pain – whether it was mild or intense, merely annoying or positively unbearable – as something that was simply unavoidable; it was a fact of life, it was natural, it was as certain and unshakable as the color of the sky or the changing of the seasons; pain just happened. Previously, it had happened most often when the man with the velvety voice was angry, but it could happen, too, when he was perfectly and impeccably calm; it happened sometimes when the man discovered another empty bed or another wide-eyed little one hovering uncertainly by the door, too frightened to even twist the knob; but it could happen even when nobody had been any trouble at all; it happened on those rare and unsettling occasions when the man was drunk, but it also happened when he was sober; of course by this time there was no man with a velvety voice any longer – Jack had been younger then, and to think this always came as a sort of surprise to him. It seemed to him that he had never really been a child, that he hadn't precisely entered the world at all – simply sprung into being exactly as he was, pale and thin and perfectly grown, the fractured and distorted image of what a man ought to be.

Either way, it followed that pain was simply something he had come to expect; and as such, he saw very little reason to cause a fuss whenever it befell him – thus, when the greasy black handle of the long silver knife with which North had entrusted him slipped a bit, and the razor edge of the gleaming blade happened to fall upon his hand, the sensation that followed was unpleasant but largely unsurprising; as such, Jack did nothing beyond murmuring a particularly vulgar profanity under his breath, and pausing in his task to allow the stinging a moment to pass. A bit of blood, shocking in how red and bright it was, welled up instantly; but Jack was not easily unnerved, and so merely wiped the drops away with his fraying jacket sleeve, and indeed, had every intention of forgetting the incident entirely. He had resumed, and nearly finished, the slicing of the onion when a sudden exclamation from the other end of the kitchen drew his attention from his current occupation. "Jack, your hand…!"

"Huh?" He glanced briefly away from the cutting board, and the onion upon it, which he had, since Aster had left him to it, reduced to small, yellow-white bits.

"Your hand…" Tooth repeated; she deserted her post by the bubbling gray pot on the stove to approach the boy, and there was concern in her voice, a great deal more, Jack thought, than this really merited.

Admittedly, however, when he followed her gaze and saw the fair bit of blood that had trickled down from the jagged crimson slit without his notice, even he had to confess that he rather understood her disquiet. Nonetheless, it did not, in his opinion, truly warrant the anxiety in her brown eyes; and so he handled the problem as he felt appropriate, and cleared the dark red off the pale skin with his sleeve once more. "Sorry about that, I just sort of lost grip of the knife earlier and…"

"Oh, you shouldn't wipe it on your clothes!" Tooth interrupted, for all the world as if he had done something unforgivably indecent. (The remaining three, who had not, up until now, noticed anything amiss, turned around at this point to find out what was going on.)

"You should put a Band-Aid on that, at least – I think North moved them to the third drawer, but I can never be sure—

"I told you million of times," North huffed, seemingly rather stung, "it is in second drawer. I never move it—

"Here, I'll take care of it," Aster pushed suddenly off the counter, taking Jack gently by the wrist. "The kid doesn't even know the way anyway."

"The kid is right here, and the kid is sixteen, so hardly even qualifies—

"You were scared of the clown door in the walkthrough, Frostbite," Aster said, as if he needed reminding.

Jack felt his face flush. "I—I wasn't—!"

Aster just looked at him.

"…Well. A lot of people don't like clowns."

"Da. Too much makeup," North nodded solemnly. "And cackling."

"_Thank_ you!"

* * *

The remainder of the night proved enjoyable; yet, had anyone asked, Jack rather felt he would be hard-pressed to explain why. He supposed, if he had to, he could argue that the food had been good – and this was the truth, for the gravy-covered concoction North loaded on their plates was far and away the best thing he believed he'd ever tasted – yet he didn't believe this was quite it; and he supposed, if he must, he could mention North's airplane – and to be fair, the bulky heap of scrap metal the man had somehow turned into a violently red, remote-controlled model craft was rather remarkable – but it had so distracted them that everyone present briefly forgot the dinner entirely, and very nearly burned it; and they might have, had one of the pots not given a sudden, ferocious bubbling noise, and Tooth not rushed off to check on it before any harm could befall it. (Nonetheless, the ten minutes previously had been highly entertaining, as North had sent the plane chasing Aster all round the kitchen.)

Jack concluded, after a moment of thought, that there had been no particulars, no specifics, that he could call upon to answer the question; the evening itself, in its pure and unabridged entirety, was what he had enjoyed – yet when he tried to recall it again in his mind, it was nothing more than bits and pieces, fragments and shards that couldn't even _begin_ to tell the full story. By the following morning, all he could remember for certain was _smiling _– smiling a lot, smiling more than he believed he ever had in his life, smiling so hard his face hurt by the time they drove away. Throughout the meal, he'd smiled as the others cracked jokes or told stories, and afterward, he'd smiled when North playfully snatched the butter knife before he could ("I try not to let guests walk away with more than one bandage per night"); and he smiled – though he tried very hard not to – when Aster reached out and ruffled his hair so it stood up on end; and when they at last made it back out to the parking lot and climbed into the car, he turned his face to the window and smiled out at the stars the whole ride home.


End file.
